Seeing Eur' 




on 



Sixty Dollars 





By 



Wilbur FinleyKulei 



<s^. 




Class JDA 

Book 

Copyrightl^?— 



tr-; 



GOraRICHT DEPOSn^ 



SEEING EUROPE ON 
SIXTY DOLLARS 



Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
The tibrary of Congress 



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SEEING EUROPE ON 
SIXTY DOLLARS 



BY 
WILBUR FINLEY PAULEY 




New York 
Desmond FitzGerald, Inc. 



13A4,3o 
f3 



Copyright, 1919 
By Desmokd FitzGerald, Inc. 



©C!.A3300^8 



TO 

MY MOTHER 



COi^TENTS 

PAGE 

Foreword . . • 11 

From New York to London 21 

Getting a Start 34 

London and Environs 49 

Week-end in Paris 59 

From London Bridge to Windsor Castle . 83 
The Little Village by the Sea ... 92 

Along the River Darenth 102 

Shakespeare's Town 110 

Over the Hills of Surrey 118 

Old Chester 123 

Epping Forest 129 

An Excursion in Letters 136 

Waltham Abbey 150 

Appendix 164 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



On the Thames, Above Windsor 
Castle Frontispiece ^^ 

Below London Bridge . . Facing Page 30 ^ 
Clare College and Bridge, 



Cambridge " 


" 52"^ 


An Art Student .... " 


66 "^ 


A Grisette " 


" 72 *^ 


L'Arc de Triomphb ... " 


" 90*^ 


Cathedral OP Nothe-Dame . " 


" 106; 


The British Museum . . " 


" 136 - 



FOEEWORD 

^^ Travel without Money '^ may sound 
too good to be true, yet all those who have 
followed my tried plan for seeing Europe 
on next to nothing have returned with a 
deeper appreciation of ancient art, history 
and literature, and a greater knowledge of 
human nature, than they could ever hope 
to attain at school or in books. 

There is a longing in every student's 
life some time or other to get a glimpse of 
Europe, and the real life of the people 
over there, before he settles down to his 
chosen profession, which will later no 
doubt aiford him the opportunity of re- 
peating the trip with a maximum of dol- 
lars. By student I mean any young per- 
son, fresh from college perhaps, whose ad- 

11 



FOREWORD 

venturous soul is above buttons, and who 
has an abundance of courage, enthusiasm, 
self-confidence and initiative, with a real 
desire not only to excel but also to serve. 

It would be a stretch of the imagination, 
indeed, to conceive of any one being able 
to expand the small sum of sixty dollars 
to cover the entire expense of such a trip. 
This sum denotes the amount of money I 
had in my pocket when I started out to 
make my way to London, and represents 
the aggregate basis upon which I built the 
means for a splendid vacation. 

My time allotment was such that I was 
qualified to visit only the memorials of 
achievement in London and Paris, and be- 
come slightly acquainted with some of the 
subtle charm that lurks about the old cas- 
tles, cathedrals and forests of the Mother 
Country. But I think I can prove to any 
young, energetic person, however lament- 
ably poor in purse, who can afford to be 

12 



FOKEWORD 

absent abroad for six months, or even a 
year, that the gateway to Europe will 
swing open, revealing all that is glorious 
and educational, provided he possesses in 
advance some commercial asset, or mental 
equipment. 

We are all familiar with the picture of 
the ancient pilgrim, with his staff and 
knapsack, wandering leisurely over hill 
and dale. Now if one will substitute a 
typewriter in his knapsack for the pro- 
verbial loaf of bread and jug of wine, so 
to speak, or a practical knowledge of ste- 
nography, bookkeeping, draughtsmanship, 
photography, reporting, or even the mech- 
anism and driving of motors, and inject 
into his veins a little of what is known as 
Yankee hustle, you will perchance per- 
ceive my meaning. 

I had a little of three of these commer- 
cial assets in my knapsack when I struck 
London, and although I had not chosen a 

13 



POEEWORD 

profession, I rather leaned towards jonr- 
nalism. Thus my experiences and observa- 
tions gained on such pilgrimage, coupled 
with the material for copy which I gath- 
ered during my wanderings, made it pos- 
sible for me to enter the journalistic field 
immediately on my return to New York. I 
am giving this little intimate sketch for the 
benefit of others, who may be tempted to 
try my plan of going abroad, whether em- 
bryo of doctor, lawyer, architect, priest, 
and who may profit by my mistakes. The 
fundamental benefits accrued will last a 
lifetime. Polite adventure bears no 
stigma, and one will be surprised at the 
amount of dignity and self-respect con- 
nected with the idea of working one's way 
commercially in an alien land. 

The longing to visit the historic and lit- 
erary haunts of Europe, notably of Eng- 
land, comes to many very early in youth, 
generally after one has become attached 

14 



FOREWORD 

to the characters of Thackeray and Dick- 
ens, and deeply fascinated by the prose 
and poetry of Shakespeare, George Eliot, 
Carlyle, Byron, Gray and Tennyson. My 
dream of London before I arrived there 
was of a great city, enveloped in impene- 
trable fog, and inhabited for the greater 
part by the characters of heroism and 
romance, with Thackeray's brain children 
occupying the most of Mayfair, and Dick- 
ens' characters creeping through the 
shadows in the sordid sections. And, bless 
my soul, if I didn't find some of Thacke- 
ray's and Dickens' character creations 
still in London, defiant of changing modes 
and customs. 

I began making preparations for my 
workaday trip abroad during the latter 
part of my last year at school. Besides 
reading what other travelers had written 
about the places I longed to visit, I started 
to equip myself commercially. First of 

15 



FOREWORD 

all, I bought a book of stenography, rented 
a typewriter, which I ascertained was in 
universal use, and purchased a five-dollar 
kodak. Within six months, having de- 
voted much of my leisure time during the 
day and evenings to the task, I had ac- 
quired a pretty good speed on the type- 
writer, and could take dictation in short- 
hand at the rate of fifty words a minute, 
which was not very fast, but which was 
speedy enough for commercial corre- 
spondence. I had also turned out some 
photographs of news value from my ko- 
dak, after finding out from the city edi- 
tors of several of the New York news- 
papers the desired value of such photo- 
graphs, and had also tried my hand at 
free lancing. I felt now that I was 
equipped to meet any financial emergency 
abroad. 

It is the best plan to make one's first 
sea voyage as comfortable as possible, that 

16 



FOREWORD 

is, if one wishes to be comfortably sea- 
sick, if such a thing can be. I had saved 
up sixty dollars for the trip so far, fifty- 
five dollars of which I invested in first- 
class passage on a ten-day boat out of New 
York. Now if I had to do over again, I 
would start from Boston on a one-class 
steamer to Glasgow, which costs about 
forty-five dollars eastward, with a short 
stop-over in Scotland, and then by train, 
third-class, to London, the fare being a lit- 
tle over six dollars, about fifty-one dol- 
lars altogether. It was a mistake also in 
allowing myself only three dollars with 
which to make the start in London; I 
should have had ten at least. It was 
only luck, that evanscent child of chance, 
which saved the day. 

Many students who go abroad on a mini- 
mum capital make a grave mistake in 
heading first for France, Germany, or 
Italy, with the intention of working their 

17 



FOREWORD 

way across the continent. They are seri- 
ously handicapped at the start by their 
inability to speak the languages of these 
countries as it is spoken. Then the wages 
for manual labor on the continent are so 
meager that a workaday pilgrimage 
through the country becomes one of ex- 
treme drudgery, and the haphazard means 
of getting the proper nutrition and rest 
is apt to undermine the health of the pil- 
grim, however young and robust. Work- 
ing one's way on a fourteen-day cattle 
boat across the Atlantic will crush out the 
poetry and enthusiasm of the most opti- 
mistic soul at the very start, and is bound 
to prove reactionary. Traveling by 
steerage eastward on the big English 
liners is not so bad, and is ridiculously 
cheap, but it is not to be commended. 
One-class on the smaller steamers, or sec- 
ond-class on the big ocean greyhounds, are 
by far the most agreeable ways of reach- 
ing Europe cheaply. 

18 



FOREWORD 

The most assured and successful plan is 
to go direct to London, where any of the 
aforementioned commercial faculties, and 
there are many other ways to earn an 
honest penny for traveling, will insure one 
of three meals a day, lodging, and ade- 
quate earnings for the educational pil- 
grimages, including views afoot, if only 
for the week-end, radiating to Ireland, 
Scotland, Wales, Paris, Brussels, and Os- 
tend, with longer but very inexpensive 
trips to Norway, Germany, Switzerland, 
and Italy. And one will be among people 
who express their joys and sorrows in the 
same words as your own. 

In the Appendix to this little volume 
will be found a memorandum of the low- 
est steamship rates to Europe (not steer- 
age) from the larger seaports on this side, 
and a list of the very cheap trips that can 
be made from the English metropolis to 
all parts of the British Isles and Eu- 
rope. 

19 



FORWORD 

Althougli I made my workaday trip 
some years ago, I have found the condi- 
tions later in England to be even better 
for the young American student who is 
commercially equipped, to earn his way as 
he proceeds step by step on his vacation 
pilgrimage, for London has become greatly 
Americanized. 

The brief prose sketches of some of my 
little pilgrimages which appear herein 
were written during my trip. They do 
not concern perhaps the places of greatest 
renown, but are descriptive of the jaunts 
I enjoyed the most, and are now collected 
for the first time. For some of the his- 
toric data concerning Waltham Abbey, I 
am indebted to the Eev. J. H. Stamp, the 
curate. The cover design is by Walter E. 
Blythe. 



20 



SEEING EUEOPE ON SIXTY DOL- 
LARS 

FROM NEW YORK TO LONDON 

Theore were many tearful farewells said 
at the pier on the part of the other passen- 
gers. I swallowed the lump of loneliness, 
and steeled myself to the fact that I was 
now a wanderer, fancy free, bent upon my 
solitary way, for a purpose; and that the 
most cheerful thing to do was to imagine 
myself in the pit, and let other people play 
their little part in the drama of life upon 
the stage before me. 

Onr steamer nosed it slowly Enrope- 
wards, plowing through the ever chang- 
ing sea, which smiled and frowned by 
turns. Gorgeous sunsets, stars sinking 
into the depths like tiny moons ; ships that 

21 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

passed in the night; racing porpoises; a 
distant school of sponting whales ; a baby 
with the colic on the steerage deck; hours 
of almost impermeable fog — all this 
served to give wings to Time. 

There were not many crossing at this 
season of the year, — March, and the sea 
was unusually calm. I remember a young 
man from the Middle West, making his 
first trip, who was anxious to see Eotten 
Eow in London (the fashionable ride in 
Hyde Park), which he imagined to be the 
abode of all ^Hhe rotten people '' in the 
English metropolis ; also a diminutive miss 
from Broadway, who was on her way to 
dance syncopated time on her toes in 
*^The Belle of New York," which was at 
that time the most popular musical comedy 
in London ; and a man from Hoboken who 
ate with his knife. 

The five dollars which I had in my 
pocket after paying my steamship fare in 

22 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

New York was reduced to four by the 
time we reached Southampton. I had 
contrived to make the voyage without an 
extra, and the stewardess and table stew- 
ard were seemingly content with a fifty 
cent tip. My baggage, which consisted of 
a suit case, in which I had packed an extra 
suit of clothes and several changes of 
linen, had now, in English waters, become 
luggage. My walking shoes had also 
changed to boots, orthographically, and 
my patent leather shoes were still patent, 
but with a broad ^^a.'' 

As we approached Southampton I 
caught sight of three objects ashore which 
drove home the realization that I was at 
last in England: a locomotive, with iron 
buffers instead of a cow-catcher; a funny 
looking freight, or ^^ goods," train, and a 
small boy wearing an Eton jacket with a 
silk hat. 

I found I could stop over in Southamp- 

23 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

ton for part of the day, and as I was rather 
modest abont having my fortune of four 
dollars changed into English money on 
the steamer, I had it converted into some- 
thing like sixteen shillings and a few pence 
over, on shore. Then began a hurried ex- 
ploration of Southampton, which is eighty 
miles from London. 

After walking under the ancient Bar- 
gate, erected in the eleventh century, and 
admiring the picturesque old houses in 
High Street, I gave up a shilling for a 
short side journey to Netley Abbey, a most 
interesting ruin about three miles from 
the city. This was of course my first 
sight of a real ruin, — a graystone abbey, 
ravaged by time, and partly covered with 
a mantle of ivy, set in a quiet woodland. 
I longed to touch a spark to some dry 
twigs under the protecting walls of the 
priory, and snuggle up in one corner for 
the night, but London was calling. 

24 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

The countryside was wonderfully green 
for this time of the year, and the steel road 
to London, in a fast, smooth-running ex- 
press, — ^my steamship fare included the 
ride to London, seemed to wind through a 
great, well-kept garden. Against a 
charming rural background I espied a 
thatch-roofed cottage, the smoke pouring 
from the squatty brick and stone chimney 
as if the occupants were entertaining com- 
pany. This gave me the shiver of a re- 
minder that nobody was expecting me in 
London, and we were rumbling nearer and 
nearer to the world's metropolis. If only 
Ealph Nickleby, or Sairey Gamp, knew I 
was on my way, I thought, they would cer- 
tainly put my name in the pot. 

Waterloo Station at last. I was now be- 
ginning to feel a little shaky in the knees. 
Alone in London! The melodramatic ex- 
pression of ^^The child is in London,'* 

25 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

kept ringing in my ears as I tipped the 
uniformed porter a sixpence. He carried 
my bag to the street, called a hansom cab, 
and gave the driver the address of my des- 
tination, as politely and with as much 
servility as thongh I had been an Ameri- 
can millionaire, while I was summing np 
mentally how much of my four dollars 
was left after paying out two shillings at 
Southampton, a sixpence tip, and now an- 
other shilling for the ride to Eussell 
Square. 

Nevertheless I rode hopefully and ma- 
jestically into London town that evening, 
across Waterloo Bridge, past Somerset 
House, over the Strand, and on to Guil- 
ford Street. I had studied the list of fur- 
nished rooms to let, as well as ' ' situations 
vacant,^' in a London penny newspaper on 
the train, and had selected from the first 
what appeared to be a very promising ad- 
vertisement for lodgings, which read: 

26 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

''Comft. rms. fr. gents,, bath (h.c), close bus, 
mis. optionl., frm. 6s wkly. — Guilford Street, 
Russell-sq., W.C." 

Translated, the above was an announce- 
ment to the effect that comfortable rooms 
for gentlemen, with bath, hot and cold 
water, near the omnibus line, with meals 
optional, could be obtained for six shil- 
lings ($1.46), and upwards, a week, in a 
quiet street in Bloomsbury, a district dear 
to the heart of the impecunious American 
traveler. 

The low rate of $1.46 appealing strongly 
to my low financial condition, I hopped 
from the cab in front of a gloomy looking 
house, with an ugly terrace, and after pay- 
ing the shilling (.24) fare to the cabman, 
announced my presence by means of a 
quaint brass knocker. A motherly sort of 
old lady, but with the earmarks of the 
landlady, greeted me at the door. 

Now a New York landlady would have 

27 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

demanded cash in advance for a room, and 
rudely slammed the door in one's face if 
the cash was not forthcoming. Instead of 
this treatment, I was courteously shown 
into a very small but clean bedroom on the 
first floor, back, and assured that no pay- 
ment was asked for in advance, although 
there would be an extra charge of sixpence 
(.12) for light, if I used the gas, and soap 
and towels, for the week. Then I was 
most agreeably surprised by being asked 
to partake of some supper at nine o'clock, 
a plate of cold mutton, some bread and 
cheese, and a glass of ale, perhaps. 

But not before venturing out into Lon- 
don under the cover of night, to nose about 
a bit. All uneasiness as to what the mor- 
row held in store for me was now lost in 
the solemnity of the occasion, for I was 
picking my way through a locality I knew 
to be abounding in historic riches. 
Through the yellow glow of the gas-lamps 

28 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

I caught first sight of the British Museum, 
its classic outlines dimly illumined in the 
fog. A very polite ^^ bobby'' directed me 
across Oxford Street to Drury Lane, where 
the shade of Nell Gwynne seemed to be 
lurking in the dark corners all the way to 
the Strand. 

I did not find the electric brilliancy of 
Broadway on the Strand as I expected to. 
But the tide of humanity! It ebbed and 
flowed about me like a great sea. It was 
this quiet impressiveness of teeming life, 
and the low buildings, which had struck me 
more forcibly than any other phase of the 
unexplored city upon my first entry, be- 
fore the day had waned. Accustomed to 
skyscrapers, roaring and rattling trains 
on the elevated, and the clanging trolley 
car gongs of New York, the general effect 
of London at first glance had been disap- 
pointing; but the vastness of it creeps 
upon one by degrees ; and amid the wintry 

29 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

fog and deep shadows, it seems to almost 
stifle one, like a great black monster who 
hugs you tight in unpleasant dreams. 

I hurried along, with the guide-book 
knowledge that somewhere in this vicinity 
the Strand melted into Fleet Street, sacred 
to journalism; now past the ancient 
Church of St. Clement Danes, where Dr. 
Johnson owned a pew, along the thorough- 
fare where the Duchess of Gloucester did 
penance, barefooted, and carrying a 
lighted taper, on to the old palace of 
Henry VIII. Here I paused under a flick- 
ering street lamp to consult my guide- 
book, which had cost me two pence. A' 
policeman wandered by, eying me rather 
euriously. I wondered if he ever called 
out: ^^ Three o'clock and a rainy morn- 
ing,^' as they did in the days of the cur- 
few and dips (I got that out of my tup- 
pence guide-book). But he continued on 
his beat with a look of ^^more to be pitied 

30 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

than scorned,'^ while I set out again for 
my goal, the home of Mr. Punch. 

Probably if it had not been for the lur- 
ing, happy qualities of Mr. Punch I would 
now have a different tale to tell. I was 
curious to see just where Mr. Punch lived, 
and perhaps catch the merry, saucy 
twinkle in his eye. Naturally the office 
was dark, and the street almost deserted 
in this vicinity — it was after eight o'clock. 
So on my return I peered into several of 
the office windows of the big metropolitan 
dailies, and in front of the Daily Chron- 
icle building I chanced upon a bulletin 
board, upon which had been pasted a page 
of the paper containing a list of ^^Situa- 
tions Vacant." I perused it as closely as 
I was able in the semi-gloom, and when I 
returned to Guilford Street I had selected 
my particular job. It was an advertise- 
ment calling immediately for a young 
journalist for a country weekly at a salary 

31 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

of thirty shillings (a little over seven dol- 
lars), the applicant to give age, refer- 
ences, etc. 

I was bubbling over with hope when I 
sat down at the table with my motherly 
landlady at nine o'clock in her dining- 
room in the basement. If you ever had 
occasion to eat cold mutton, bread and 
cheese, washed down with sparkling ale, 
before a hospitable fireplace, when you 
were ravenously hungry and several thou- 
sand miles away from home, you can of 
course appreciate my feelings. A kettle 
sang on a grate of glowing coals, a canary 
bird cheeped sleepily in a cage by the win- 
dow; George III, Wellington and bloody 
Mary looked down from ancient prints on 
the wall ; while a modern Marchioness, who 
looked anything but half-starved, peeped 
through a crack in the door leading from 
the cellar-kitchen, attracted doubtless by 
the odd intonation and pronunciation of a 
vagabond Yankee. 

32 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

Later, by candle-light, I wrote the ap- 
plication for the newspaper 30b at H , 

on the south coast, fifty miles from Lon- 
don, and sent it off post-haste that same 
evening. As the gas was extra I used the 
candle, which had been selected from a 
row of half a dozen or more brass candle- 
sticks which the Marchioness had placed 
on the hat-rack in the hall for the other 
lodgers. And yet the gnide-books to Eng- 
land say that the days of the sun-dial and 
rushlight have passed. 

Before snuflfing out the candle for the 
night I made out a memorandum of my 
expenses for my first day in England: 

Lunch at Southampton, one shilling $ .24 

Trip to Netley Abbey 24 

Newspaper and guide-book, three pence . . .06 
Cab fare and fee to porter, one and six . . .36 
Incidentals, two pence 04 

$. 94 
33 



GETTING A STAET 

At four o'clock on the following after- 
noon I boarded a train at Victoria station 

for H , having received about an hour 

previous a telegraphic reply to my writ- 
ten application from the editor of the 
country weekly, who asked me to call on 

him at his oflfice in H at my earliest 

convenience. I was rather astonished at 
this rapidity of action of the part of an 
Englishman; I had thought that three or 
four days, or a week, would elapse before I 
received a reply to my application, if any. 
And this, with later experiences, proved 
most conclusively that they ^^ hustle'' in 
England just about as much as they do in 
the States, and that the man who is 
^^ quick" always receives the first con- 
sideration. 

34 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

My landlady (Heaven rest her sonl) 
was now displaying much motherly inter- 
est in my getting a job, even though she 
would lose a lodger, and she wouldn't 
hear of my paying for my room until I 
had secured a berth, as she termed it. 

The first part of the forenoon, after 
breakfasting in Oxford Street for eight 
pence (.16), I spent in answering some 
other promising advertisements, and later 
enjoyed a sort of sparrow 's-eye view of 
London from the top of the omnibuses, 
a most enjoyable experience for a few 
pence. In two hours, I should say, I saw 
from without the Houses of Parliament, 
Westminster Abbey, National Gallery, 
Whitehall, Buckingham Palace, a bit of 
Hyde Park, St. Paul's Cathedral, Bank 
of England, Mansion House, London 
Bridge, Tower of London, and had a look 
down Whitechapel Eoad, which after- 
wards becomes Mile End Eoad, the prin- 

35 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

cipal thoronglifare through the poor and 
sordid East End. But all through these 
varied regions of interest the thought of 
^^how long will my three dollars last?'' 
kept up a melancholy rapping at my 
cranium door. 

The railway fare to H decreased my 

capital by about eighty-five cents, travel- 
ing third class. It was a ride of continual 
gazing on the delightful minute and vary- 
ing details of English town and country 
life through which the train passed; first, 
rumbling across the great iron bridge 
which spans the Thames, and then the al- 
most endless roaring through the gloomy 
mystery of peopled vastness, over which 
hung a copper-colored pall of smoke and 
fog, a million chimney-pots, seemingly, 
emitting the fumes from burning soft 
coal. 

Arriving at H I walked from the 

station to the oflSce of til© little country 

3§ 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

weekly, about half a mile. There was a 
stiffj bracing breeze from the sea, which 
seemed to crowd out the smoke of the city 
from my lungs, and give me added cour- 
age to meet that which Fate held in store, 
The editor was a young, clean-cut, and 
rather well bred Englishman, who had 
just taken on the weekly, and whose one 
ambition of course was to increase its cir- 
culation. Being a Yankee, he no doubt 
believed that I had some new ideas con- 
cealed up my sleeve, when in reality I had 
had little or no experience in practical 
newspaper work. After I had shown him 
some specimens of the free lancing I had 
done in New York, and had told him the 
object of my visit, to see and learn as much 
of Europe as possible while working my 
way (I took good care not to betray my 
very low state of finances), he decided to 
take me on for a try, at least. It was my 
knowledge of shorthand, I^m sure, that 

37 



SEEING EUEOPE ON SIXTY DOLLAES 

turned the point of decision in my favor, 
as this is the principal requirement of an 
English reporter on all of the conserva- 
tive papers, the speeches and interviews 
being taken verbatim. 

My second day in England, and I had 
landed a job ! I felt like throwing np my 
hat and giving three cheers for the Queen. 
Instead, I began to sum np how I conld 
possibly eke the week ont on the little 
money I had left. Bnt the editor came 
to my rescue with the happy suggestion 
that I board and lodge at his house, as he 
had leased a rather large villa, and his 
wife already had several ^ Spaying guests. '^ 
The rate would be twelve shillings a 
week ; so deducting the price of board and 
lodging, at the end of the week, I would 
have the magnificent fortune of eighteen 
shillings ($4.38) coming to me. 

The system of living-in is practiced to 
a large extent in England, and is some- 

38 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

thing to be avoided by the American. It 
served finally to sever my connections 
with the country weekly. For the life of 
me I could not become accustomed to hav- 
ing a very, very light tea at five o'clock, 
and then a very, very, very light supper 
at nine, which is customary among the 
middle-classes in England, instead of a 
heavy meal at six or seven o'clock, as we 
are wont to have in New York. So I got 
to smuggling in sandwiches and sweet 
cakes at tea time, and an occasional cold 
beefsteak pie at supper. Thereby hangs 
a tale. 

But during my apprenticeship on the 
weekly, I stayed there for five weeks, and 
managed to save up fifteen dollars in 
that time, I became acquainted with many 
of the laws, weaknesses, strength, and 
everyday customs of provincial England, 
which would have been unachievable in 
books. For five weeks I hustled like mad 

39 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

to keep up my reputation as a Yankee, 
and besides trying my hand at leaders, 
mixing up a little in local politics, cover- 
ing the police station and magistrate's 
court, where drunken brawls made up the 
majority of cases, I ran a column on 
society. We introduced magic lantern 
pictures in the office window to attract the 
crowd on Saturday evenings, when the 
paper came fresh from the hand-press 
across the way; that is, when the foreman, 
pressman, compositor and puzzle editor, 
all in one, found time to leave the ^^pub,'' 
(saloon) on the corner. But the circula- 
tion had a nasty habit of crawling up a 
few points, and then dropping again in 
a most alarming fashion. 

I found little or no difficulty in master- 
ing the vagaries of old English, and be- 
fore the first week was out I could add 
an ^^u'' to humor, and an ^'V^ to travel- 
ing, quite naturally. Of course I spent 

40 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

mucli time in studying the files of the big 
London dailies. It was during the sec- 
ond week that I was asked to report a 
slight railway accident between London 

and H , and of course I wrote that ^^the 

train jumped the track. '^ This American 
expression escaped the eyes of the editor, 
who read the copy, and who would have 
changed the expression to ^Hhe train left 
the rails." But when printed it did not 
escape the notice of a young English 
journalist, who had left the vacancy I was 
filling for a more lucrative position on a 
daily paper in the adjoining borough, and 
who came rushing into the office on the 
following Monday to locate the source of 
this strange idiom. Although startled to 
see the stars and stripes fluttering above 
his old desk, he made advances of com- 
radeship, which ended in a warm friend- 
ship between John Bull and Uncle Sam, 
and which has lasted to this day. Later 

41 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

he, too, joined the ranks of worka- 
day pilgrims and worked his way through 
Canada and the States to New York, and 
returned to England with more than ex- 
perience and knowledge in his knapsack — 
a wife. 

All this time I was absorbing every- 
thing possible, and shook hands with na- 
ture more than once in her varying moods 
on the South downs, and along the Eng- 
lish Channel as far as Beachy Head, at 
Eastbourne, with hours spent at Brighton, 
which, at this time, was crowded with 
representatives of the fashionable world; 
visiting the Pavilion, erected by George 
IV, with its numerous domes, minarets, 
and cupolas, as if, so wrote Sydney 
Smith, ^Hhe dome of St. Paul's had come 
to Brighton and pupped. '^ 

I was once assigned to report a fash- 
ionable bazaar at the town hall at H , 

which was to be inaugurated by the well 

42 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

known Lady So-and-So. The time had 
come for taking down a half -hour's speech 
at least, and my pencil trembled in my 
hand, for I had yet to report my first 
public address in shorthand. The lady of 
title, who looked very dowdy in compar- 
ison to onr ladies of rank at Newport, or 
on Fifth Avenne, rose, cleared her throat, 
and then said, in a very demnre voice 
(this was before the day of the suffrag- 
ette) : ^^ Ladies and Gentlemen, I now de- 
clare this bazaar open." So I had an ex- 
tra half hour to sit and watch some of the 
smart young people, including the Earl 
of Yarmouth, render a sad amateurish in- 
terpretation of one of Pinero's drawing- 
room plays. 

I ran up to London on my first Satur- 
day afternoon, directly after receiving my 
salary, on a cheap round trip ticket, and 
after paying my landlady for the rent of 
the room, which I had so suddenly 

43 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

vacated, joined the throng outside the old 
Lycenm Theatre, where I heard Forbes 
Eobertson and Mrs. Patrick Campbell in 
Macbeth, from a shilling seat in the gal- 
lery, taking a midnight train back to 

H . 

At the end of five weeks I returned to 
London for good, richer by eighteen dol- 
lars; bnt my short experience on the 
country weekly had proved most helpful 
in more ways than one. And now that I 
had gained a sort of foothold, I decided 
to look for employment which would give 
me a wider scope in getting about the 
country, and certainly more personal 
freedom than by ^^living-in.'' But I 
suffered quite a shock in finding, after 
four weeks' absence, the green blinds 
drawn at my old lodgings in Bloomsbury, 
and the Marchioness in tears. My dear 
old landlady had died, and the house was 
seen to pass into other hands. To me 

44 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

this gloomy old lodging house will ever 
be associated with other corners in Eng- 
land which carry memories of the illus- 
trious dead. 

I now decided to look for lodgings in 
another district, and called at many a 
lodging house in Netting Hill, Kensing- 
ton, Bayswater, and Brompton districts, 
and off Tottenham Court Eoad. But the 
majority of the landladies looked too 
much like Miss Sally Brass, ^^ whose sal- 
low complexion was only relieved by a 
healthy glow on the tip of her nose,^' to 
prove inviting. Finally I ran across a 
delightful old house practically buried in 
Shepherd Street, just off Piccadilly, in 
the fashionable Mayfair neighborhood, 
almost within a stone's throw of Hyde 
Park. 

The house faced a square, with a small 
market in the center, which was as quiet as 
a village green; but to just turn the cor- 

45 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

ner was to find one's self in the tide of 
London's eight millions. It boasted of a 
conservatory, which opened off from the 
first landing of the stairway, where the 
water splashed over a lot of artificial 
stones, and where curtsey lords and 
dowager ladies, in days gone by, no doubt, 
whispered sweet nothings and gossip into 
each other's ears. 

The landlady was a rather comely 
woman, but with a worn, tired expression, 
whose lodgers were chiefly parlor-maids 
and valets from the nearby mansions of the 
lords and ladies, and whose husband spent 
the greater per cent of her earnings at 
the public house in the square, next to the 
barber shop. 

The rent of a room here was eight shill- 
ings ($1.95) a week, with a charge of six- 
pence for breakfast, consisting of oatmeal 
and cream, bacon and eggs, toast, orange 
marmalade, and tea. The first night I oc- 
cupied temporarily a tiny room on the 

46 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

ground floor, directly under the conserva- 
tory, the glass floor of which served as a 
ceiling for the hall bedroom. During the 
night the fountain overflowed in the con- 
servatory, and I was awakened by a minia- 
ture Niagara coming down upon me. 

The next night I was cosily lodged in a 
room on the second floor, front, which 
vaunted of a set of leather-covered furni- 
ture and a miniature grate. My bath 
came up every morning in a small tin 
pail, with a sponge attached, and I could 
almost see myself in the bright polish 
which I found on my boots every morning 
outside my bedroom door. 

The real vagabond in his wanderings 
first selects a protected and cosy corner 
in a hay-stack, or barn, and then 
meanders in search of food. Even the 
migratory birds choose their nesting place 
in the branches of the trees before setting 
out on the wings of exploration. You 
will have noticed perhaps that ordinary 

47 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

mortals do the very same thing, as if by 
common primitive instinct. 

Having now a comfortable roost in 
Shepherd Street, and a fortune of twelve 
dollars, I renewed my search for employ- 
ment in London, mainly by written and 
personal application from the advertise- 
ments in the papers. Small premiums 
were asked in many instances, even for 
office work, but I found numerous open- 
ings, including the selling of books and 
novelties on a commission; but the role 
of book agent was to be my last resort. 
My living expenses for the first week in 
London were as follows: 
Rent of room per week, at eight shillings . .$1.95 

Breakfasts 84 

Dinners, one shilling 1.68 

Tea at 5 o'clock, at five pence 70 

Supper at 9 o'clock, about sixpence 84 

Incidentals, 'bus fares, stamps, etc 24 

$6.25 
48 



LONDON AND ENVIEONS 

On the last day of the week, while wan- 
dering through the tangled lanes of the 
City (the business aorta of London), I 
dropped by chance into the office of an 
American typewriter manufacturing firm, 
where I found that an agency existed for 
shorthand-typists (typewriter operators 
are called typists over there), and the 
manager, a very agreeable young English- 
man, after dictating a trial letter to me, 
assured me of immediate employment. 
He said, much to my delight, that there 
was a constant demand for substitute 
stenographers and typewriters during the 
spring and summer months, when the va- 
cation days were on. 

This proved a most propitious opening, 
and it kept me going during the remainder 

49 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

of my stay abroad. My earnings fluc- 
tuated from five to fifteen dollars a 
week, which was very good, considering. 
In fact, I was considering most of the 
time. Did not Dickens work at Lambert's 
Blacking warehouse at a salary of seven 
shillings ($1.70) a week, then as clerk to 
Mr. Molloy, New Square, Lincoln's Inn, 
and subsequently with E. Blackmore, at- 
torney, at Grey's Inn, at a salary of thir- 
teen shillings and sixpence ($3.28), dur- 
ing which time he was reading at the Brit- 
ish Museum and studying shorthand? No 
matter what one does, there is always a 
deal of consolation in knowing that some 
favorite celebrity did the very same thing. 
My periods of substitution lasted from 
three days to a week, sometimes two 
weeks, in many of the largest financial 
and commercial houses in London. One 
week I spent with Sir Savile Crossley, 
who was then looking after some notable 

50 



SEEING EUEOPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

charities for the throne, particularly a 
hospital in which the then Prince of 
Wales, the late King Edward VII, was 
very much interested. Sir Savile's cuffs 
were always frayed at the ends, and I 
used to wonder what sort of a laundress 
they employed at his home in Carlton 
House Terrace. 

About this time I chanced upon Philip 
Verrill Mighels, who was struggling to 
gain recognition for his short stories and 
novels in England, but without any great 
degree of success, and I visited him sev- 
eral times in his humble quarters in 
Bloomsbury. He complained of the win- 
ter fog cutting his throat, and berated the 
English mothers for allowing their chil- 
dren to go about in the raw weather with 
short stockings and bare legs. His health 
was rather poor, but improved greatly up- 
on his return to his native land, where he 
at last enjoyed the success of authorship 

51 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLAES 

wMch. he so ricMy deserved, up to the 
time of his tragic death last year in 
Nevada. I had tickets sent to me one 
day from Miss Elizabeth Eobins, who 
came originally from my home town in 
Ohio, for the premiere performance of 
^^Grierson^s Way,'' and I asked Mr. 
Mighels to share the pleasure of the 
matinee. I remember he came to the 
theatre wearing a huge sombrero, which 
attracted almost as much attention as the 
playwright. Later, in New York, he dis- 
carded his hat altogether while walking 
in the streets. 

During this time I kept the fact that I 
was working my way from many of my 
new acquaintances. My American made 
suit, with a few added embellishments 
from the shops in Bond Street, seemed to 
serve in the matter of keeping up appear- 
ances ; and then, was I not living in fash- 
ionable Mayfair! Of course every extra 

52 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

penny I saved was spent in making trips 
by the day or week-end. I radiated not 
only to points in Europe, but explored 
every historic and literary haunt of Lon- 
don, making pilgrimages on foot within a 
radius of twenty-miles of the metropolis, 
to old castles, baronial halls, quaint towns 
and remote villages, sleeping at old 
inns as the opportunity presented itself. 
On Sundays I took advantage of many 
of the cheap day excursions arranged by 
the National Sunday League. During the 
first three weeks, after my return to Lon- 
don from H , I succeeded in visiting Ox- 
ford ($1.34 round trip), Cambridge, Isle 
of Wight, Eamsgate and Margate, Ports- 
mouth, Eochester (Gad's Hill, where 
Dickens died), and Stratford-on-Avon. I 
paid only eighty-five cents for my first 
trip to Shakespeare's birthplace, from 
London and return. The first of my sav- 
ings that I began to lay aside were for 

53 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

the trip to Paris ; then I began to save up 
for the tour to Italy, taking in Eome, 
Venice, and the Lake of Lucerne. But 
when I had accumulated the cash neces- 
sary for such a trip, forty-five dollars, 
my time was up, and for family reasons, 
I had made a promise not to remain 
abroad over six months, I set my face to- 
wards New York, coming this time by way 
of Liverpool to Philadelphia, which gave 
me a delightful stop-over at Eowsley in 
Devonshire, from which station I walked 
to Haddon Hall, which turned out to be 
one of the most delightful places I ever 
visited, with memories of Dorothy Ver- 
non giving added charm to the wonder- 
fully preserved ruins, stately terraces and 
balustrades, and old English oaks. Then 
arriving in Liverpool a day earlier than 
the time set for sailing, I made the trip 
to Chester, partly by rail, and the rest 
afoot. 

54 



SEEING EUEOPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

I spent very little outside my bare liv- 
ing expenses, and when I attended tlie 
theatre, first nights preferable — Beerbohm 
Tree in King John, for instance, I was 
content to occupy a shilling seat. Of 
course I had to purchase a pair of strong- 
soled boots, leggings, and films for my 
kodak, for my rides and tramps through 
the country ; and if I ever did develop into 
a real spendthrift it was in Holywell 
Street, or in the localities in London 
where old books and prints abound. 

On a push-cart in the East End of Lon- 
don I chanced upon a complete account of 
the campaigns of the first Duke of Marl- 
borough, with excellent maps and draw- 
ings from copper plates, done in 1730, 
which seemed to have been removed intact 
from between the lids of a book, and 
which I purchased for six pence. I also 
bought for a few pence an early edition 
of John Bunyan's '^Holy War," ^^Eng- 

55 



SEEING EUEOPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

lish Bards and Scotch Eeviewers/' a 
satire by Lord Byron; an essay on the 
Civil Wars of France, by de Voltaire, and 
a splendidly preserved pamphlet, printed 
in 1693, containing a sermon on the sins 
of omission, as preached before King 
William and Queen Mary at Whitehall on 
March eighteenth of that year, by the 
Eight Eeverend Father in God, Edward, 
Lord Bishop of Worcester. 

You will no doubt recall that about four 
months previous to this time I was friend- 
less, and London a great black monster, 
ready to devour; but now, by energy, ini- 
tiative and some pretty hard work, the 
curtain of fog had been rent as if by the 
rays of the summer sun, revealing noble 
English hearts and hospitable hearth- 
stones. 

I spent a most pleasant Sunday at the 
home of Dr. L , a member of the Lon- 
don County Council, at Putney, where I 

56 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

first became acquainted with the charm of 
English home life. Later I was asked to 
a garden party, held in Temple Gardens, 
on the Thames Embankment, at which the 
Dnke and Duchess of Connanght were the 
guests of honor. I was also afforded an 
opportunity of seeing how Londoners 
lived in the suburbs, spending a Sunday 
with a very agreeable young man and his 
sister in Clapham, the former being a 
clerk in the City, who hummed snatches 
from ^^The Belle of New York,'' between 
watercress sandwiches after a tennis 
match, and who longed to see Broadway 
as we yearn to have a look in on Pic- 
cadilly. Among the Americans I visited 
in their workshop were the late Henry E. 
Chamberlain, the London correspondent of 
the New York Sun, and the late Isaac N. 
Ford, who represented the New York 
Tribune in London, both of whom showed 
me every courtesy. 

57 



SEEING EUEOPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

It is like seeing a canvas by Vicat Cole, 
whose ^'The Pool of London'' adorns the 
walls of the Tate Gallery, which everyone 
who goes to London, should visit, to watch 
London spring out of the grasp of the 
fogs like a gandy tulip, and then change 
its Easter bonnet for a summer straw, 
weighted down with roses. The charm of 
summer was fading, like the leaves, into 
the lap of autumn when I turned my face 
homeward. 

Now let's have a peep at Paris, and see 
with what little expense and time one can 
enjoy the sights of that delightful city. 



58 



WEEK-END IN PAEIS 

The imaginative path to Paris was 
illumined, as if touched with the magic 
hand of the ghosts of the past, long be- 
fore I stepped into a third-class railway 
carriage at Charing Cross Station. My 
fare to Paris from London and return was 
twenty-six shillings ($6.32), which was de- 
ducted from the twelve dollars I had 
saved up for the Whitsuntide excursion. 
The better way would have been to have 
paid seven shillings more, breaking the 
journey at Eouen, the ancient capital of 
Normandy, which has many noted Gothic 
and Eenaissance buildings, such a ticket 
being good for a week in Paris instead of 
two and a half days. 

Now nobody can see all of the attrac- 
tions in Paris in two and a half days; 

59 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

neither are they to be seen in a fortnight. 
But when one is short of cash and has a 
specified time limit in which to rush about, 
the impression one gains is apt to be more 
lasting than when one has more money 
and leisure. I had $5.68 with which to 
complete the circuit of sight-seeing, and 
had brushed up pretty well on the prin- 
cipal attractions before leaving London. 

The route I chose was by way of Folke- 
stone to Boulogne, which is the quickest 
day route to Paris, taking eight hours for 
the trip, two hours of which is spent on 
the twenty-six miles voyage across the 
English Channel. The channel behaved 
itself beautifully that Friday afternoon, 
and there were a number of people on 
board, making their first trip, who ac- 
tually seemed disappointed in not ex- 
periencing some choppy weather. 

The steamer glided alongside the quay 
at Boulogne at dusk, where the fishing 

60 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

boats were riding at anchor, and where 
fisher folk, men and women, in quaint 
garb and wooden sabots, were carrying 
the fish from the boats in great reed 
baskets, poised upon their head and 
shoulders. Soon we were racing towards 
Paris through a rather flat sandy country, 
which was dotted with small farms and 
trees which looked top heavy. 

The country through which we passed 
was not near so garden-like or well kept, 
and the third-class compartment was 
wretched in comparison to the comforts 
of third-class traveling, as in England. 
It was like sitting cros sways in a freight 
car which had b^en divided into sections, 
with windows and a door at each end. 
There was only one other person besides 
myself in this dimly lit compartment, and 
he looked like a burglar. Dressed in 
somber black, and as silent as a headstone, 
his eyes shone like little beads under a 

61 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

black felt hat, and his long, skinny fingers 
kept tugging at his pointed beard. These 
compartments, not being connected with 
any other section of the carriage, are 
ideal places for a mnrder, or a robbery, 
and as our train made very few stops, I 
felt snre that my little fortune of $5.68 
was doomed. But as the man refused to 
^ ^burgle,'' I concluded therefore that he 
was a detective in disguise, although he 
would have disarranged his beard by this 
time if they had been false. Later I 
made up my mind that he was a Svengali, 
and that a Trilby perhaps was awaiting 
him at the Gare du Nord. 

It was close on to midnight when we 
rumbled into Paris, and shortly after- 
wards I stood outside the station, with my 
bag in hand, trying to make a Parisian 
cabby understand where I wished to be 
driven for two francs (.40). An English 
acquaintance had furnished me with the 

62 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

address of a cheap pension (boarding 
house) in the Place du Chatelet, and ad- 
vised me just how much cab fare to pay 
out. 

When arriving in any large foreign city 
it is always well to be driven to your 
destination. But for the life of me I 
could not make the cabman understand my 
pronunciation of Place du Chatelet, and 
even when I brought out my ' ' easy method 
for learning French quickly," I seemed to 
flounder deeper in the mire of despond- 
ency. I opened the book under an arc 
light, and repeated aloud: ^^ Comment se 
porte monsieur votre pere?" which hap- 
pened to mean: ^^How is your father?'^ 
In my haste I had skipped a line, ^^Quel 
est le chemin pour aller a Place du 
Chatelet?" which I had intended to say, 
and which simply asked the way to the 
Place du Chatelet. But all the satisfaction 
I got was a shrug of the shoulders. I ap- 

63 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

pealed to several other cabmen, with like 
result. I was appalled. A feeling of 
utter helplessness came over me. Then I 
repeated some uncomplimentary terms in 
English, such as ignoramus, silly ass, and 
booby; and still they shrugged their 
shoulders. 

And I might have been there yet, ex- 
perimenting with my ^^easy method," if 
Svengali, who, it seemed, had been watch- 
ing the proceedings from a table on the 
sidewalk, at a cafe just opposite the sta- 
tion, over a glass of absinthe, had not 
come to my deliverance. He spoke to me 
for the first time, in broken English, and 
then translated my directions to the cab- 
man. 

At last I was in a four-wheeler, bump- 
ing over the cobblestones through the 
dark and deserted streets, feeling very 
much like a victim of the reign of terror 
on my way to the Place de la Concorde, 

64 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

there to have my head chopped off. But 
not before my mysterious traveling com- 
panion had told me his business; he was 
not a burglar, as I had supposed, but a 
Parisian undertaker, returning from a 
holiday in London. 

I parted very reluctantly with my two 
francs. The carriage rattled away. I 
rang the bell of the pension again and 
again, but there was no response. It was 
now half-past twelve, and the square was 
practically desolate. It reminded me 
somewhat of Getty Square in Yonkers, 
and I had long entertained the idea, 
gained mostly from French plays, that 
the open spaces in Paris were thronged 
with pierrots and harlequins, throwing 
confetti, all night long. Again I rang. 
This time it brought a fat, red, feminine 
face, framed in a white nightcap, at an 
upper window, and I heard something like, 
^^Nous sommes au complet,'' meaning, 

65 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

^^"We are full." But I kept on ringing 
that bell, and was finally admitted. 

I slept on a leather conch that night in 
the reception room, with colored prints of 
Mesdames dn Barry and de Pompadour 
on the wall over my head. I woke up the 
next morning to behold a male figure 
crawling from under a robe on a com- 
modious sofa in another corner of the 
room. It turned out to be a young Welsh- 
man, who had arrived at the pension 
about an hour before me, from Eouen, at 
which port he had arrived on a schooner 
from Merthyr, in Wales, having worked 
his way that far on the boat. He had 
come to Paris to study art, and for the 
next two days and a half we saw some of 
the sights together. I was glad to dis- 
card my ^^easy method'' book, for M. A., 
two of whose early pen and ink sketches 
appear in this volume, had been studying 
French all winter in preparation for his 

66 




An Art Student. 



Pase 6") 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

trip. Yet when he asked the landlady 
that morning something which sounded 
like Leh daijennay ait eel pray, and 
which meant, ^^Is breakfast ready?" she 
shrugged her shoulders, and replied: ^^Ne 
parlex-vous pas f rancais ? ' ' meaning, 
^^ Don't you speak French?" She thought 
he was speaking another language. 

My first breakfast consisted of a long 
loaf of bread, from which one tore off odd 
bits, and some very black coffee. I broke 
a front tooth off on the hard crust, and 
burned my tongue with the coffee. So we 
set out to find something more substantial 
at one of the numerous Duval establish- 
ments. 

Before leaving the pension I made ar- 
rangements with the landlady for a room 
on the top floor, three flights up, with a 
dormer window, and candle-light, for ten 
francs ($1.95), until Monday noon, with 
sixty centimes (.12) for breakfast, and 

67 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

one franc for dinner. I seemed to liave 
made a bad impression on the buxom 
landlady by my continually asking for ice 
water, for everybody drinks claret, or 
wine, in Paris. 

^^Apportez-moi nn verre d'ean fraicbe,''' 
I would say in very bad French at the 
table. And when I got what I asked for, 
it tasted like warm dishwater. Oh, how 
I longed for a glass of ice water. It was 
an unknown quantity even in London, 
especially at the cheap restaurants I was 
forced to patronize, and the soft drinks, 
like ginger beer and sarsaparilla, were 
also served lukewarm. 

Somehow after the plain cooking in 
England, — roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, 
marrow, Brussels sprouts, and apple 
tarts, the highly seasoned food of Paris, 
even in the establishments Duval, agreed 
to disagree. My whole recollection now 
of the delights of the Palais du Luxem- 

68 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

bourg, with its gallery of sculpture and 
painting, rich in masterpieces of contem- 
poraneous French art, is associated with 
cauliflower. It is amazing how one's 
digestion when traveling colors the pic- 
tures of experience and observation; just 
as I now associate Westminster Abbey 
with raspberry jam, having partaken too 
freely of that delicious preserve directly 
before my first visit to the abbey. 

But the fact that I was really in Paris 
proved more stimulating than the sparkle 
of wine, and my first day was made up of 
brief kaleidoscopic glimpses of that 
magnificent city on the Seine. I found it 
much more agreeable wandering about 
fancy free than following the directions 
of one of the numerous guide-books, al- 
though a map is always essential 

I decided first to see Paris from the 
Seine, which cuts the city into two por- 
tions, and which is arched by about thirty 

69 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

bridges on its journey from the ramparts 
that form the western boundary of the 
city to the Pont de Berey. For a few 
centimes I boarded a little steamer at the 
Pont Notre Dame, a few minutes' walk 
from the Place du Chatelet, the square 
towers of the cathedral of Notre Dame 
looming up on the He de la Cite, a most 
picturesque island, and the oldest part of 
Paris. 

The steamer had hardly left the old 
stone bridge until it was nosing under the 
Pont au Change, with a vividly colored 
flower market close to the left bank, and 
the dark arches of the Pont Neuf, which 
spans the river, just touching a narrow 
tip of the island, directly before us. This 
latter bridge was finished in 1604 in the 
reign of Henri IV. 

My destination was St. Cloud, and on 
my way down the river I caught first sight 
of the Louvre and the Gardens des Tuil- 

70 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

eries. Now we were steaming under the 
Pont Alexander III, built to commemo- 
rate the visit of the Czar of Eussia to Paris 
in 1896, and just opened for traffic; now 
nearing the Pont de lena, with the 
Palais du Trocadero on the right bank, 
and the Eiffel Tower scraping the sky on 
the left; then under the Pont de Passy, 
which taps the suburb of Passy, where 
Benjamin Franklin, while envoy to 
France, lived at No. 40 Eue Basse; and 
so on to St. Cloud, where numerous wed- 
ding parties were adding a touch of car- 
nival to the rural setting, for Paris seems 
ever to wear her heart on her sleeve (at 
that time she displayed her unindentified 
dead in the windows of the Morgue). 

The afternoon was spent on top of the 
omnibuses, threading from the Madeleine 
through the boulevards to the Place de 
la Bastille, across the city by the Rue de 
Eivoli, and the Boulevards Sebastapol 

71 



SEEING EUEOPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

and St. Michel, the latter being the main 
artery of the Latin Quarter, where art 
students of many nationalities, but prin- 
cipally Americans, undergo much priva- 
tion for art 's sake. Those I saw appeared 
to be underfed, anaemic, and the male 
portion sadly in need of a haircut. The 
grigette, which is defined by the standard 
dictionaries, as a young French woman of 
the working-class given to gallantry, was 
encountered in some of the quaint little 
restaurants of the Quartier Latin, some 
of them in bloomers, with a cigarette stick 
between their teeth, and with unwashed 
necks. 

I walked that same afternoon from the 
Tuileries through the Champs Elysees to 
the L'Arc de Triomphe, Napoleon's mag- 
nificent monument, where his victories are 
shown in reliefs, and visited the Made- 
leine, the most wonderful of modem 
churches; the Pantheon, containing the 

72 




A Grisette 



Page 72 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

tombs of Mirabean, Marat, Eosseau, and 
Voltaire; also the Palais Eoyal, wbicli 
was bequeathed by Cardinal Eichelieu to 
Louis XIII, and which was once used by 
the Eepublicans for the sittings of the tri- 
bunes during the Eeign of Terror. I also 
found time to spend the closing hour, from 
four to five, in the Louvre. 

The descriptive guide-book to this 
museum of priceless art treasures alone 
contained sixty pages. What could I see 
in the short space of sixty minutes? I 
decided ultimately to divide the hour up 
into periods, twenty minutes each for the 
painting and sculpture galleries, and two 
minutes each for the Assyrian, Greek, 
Eoman, Egyptian, Etruscan, furniture, 
carvings, tapestry, gem, and enamel sec- 
tions. Few, if any, of the art museums in 
Paris are open to the public on Mondays, 
which would be my last day in the city. 

So after gazing at Murillo^s ^^Holy 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

Family," Vinci ^s ^^Mona Lisa/^ and 
EaphaePs ^^ Belle Jardiniere," for the sec- 
ond and last time, I hnrried to see the 
gallery's greatest treasure, ^^ Venus de 
Milo." And seeing this wondrous nude 
and armless marble lady I was reminded 
of the story told of the young woman 
from Georgia, who brought her old 
colored mammy with her, while in Paris, 
to visit the Louvre; but the mammy did 
not enthuse over Miss de Milo as much as 
her young mistress thought she should. 
Finally the mammy said: '^ Chile, ah done 
wash yuh muddah, yuh sisters, an' yuhself 
so off en, dat seein' naked skin ain't no 
recreation fuh yuh ole mammy." 

The one franc dinner that evening at 
the pension consisted of soup, meat, vege- 
tables, dessert, and half a bottle of claret. 
Later I joined the motley crowd waiting 
for the gallery doors to open to Sarah 
Bernhardt 's theater, close to the pension. 

74 



SEEING EUEOPE ON SIXTY DOLLAES 

The occasion was the first appearance of 
that distinguished actress in Hamlet, or a 
real Parisian first night. The posters 
ontside the theater announced the attrac- 
tion as ^^ Hamlet, a tragedy, by Mr. Will- 
iam Shakespeare," and there were many 
in the throng no doubt who believed Mr. 
Shakespeare to be a budding playwright. 

It cost me only two francs to see the 
divine Sarah in her premiere interpreta- 
tion of the melancholy Dane from the top 
of the house. It was unmistakably a 
brilliant assembly. There was no orches- 
tra, and the rising of the curtain was 
signaled by three loud knocks on the floor 
behind the scenes. As the first curtain 
did not rise until nine o 'clock, and half an 
hour elapsed between each act, it was two 
o'clock in the morning before Hamlet ex- 
pired. 

I was up bright and early, and enjoyed 
a second view of some of the parks andi 

75 



SEEING EUEOPE ON SIXTY DOLLAES 

gardens of Paris on a quiet Sunday morn- 
ing, walking as far as the Bois de 
Boulogne, a beautiful park having an 
area of nearly four miles square, return- 
ing through the Place Vendome, where 
stands the famous column erected by 
Napoleon I, to commemorate his Russian 
and Austrian victories in 1805, but which 
was pulled down in 1871 by the Com- 
munists, and since restored. I also 
walked about the Place de la Concorde, 
the crowning point of all that is enchant- 
ing in Paris, with its immense splashing 
fountain and monolithic obelisk. The 
obelisk, brought from Luxor in 1836, marks 
the spot where Louis XVI, Marie An- 
tionette, Danton, Philippe Egalite, and 
Eobespierre were beheaded by the guillo- 
tine, and the concourse has been the scene 
of numerous other black tragedies, its gut- 
ters actually running with blood at times. 
By eleven o'clock I was nearing the 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

Cathedral of Notre Dame, going by way 
of the Pont Nenf, which I soon reached 
from the Place de la Concorde, by walk- 
ing along the banks of the Seine, on the 
river side of the Tnileries and the Louvre, 
where book stalls abound on a week-day. 
Being Whit Sunday the cathedral was 
crowded with worshipers, and the streets 
leading np to the door of this celebrated 
building of the world, with its seven cen- 
turies of history, were bright with gayly 
attired women and children, and scented 
with the flowers of the month of Mary, 
which grew in profusion in pots on every 
window sill. 

Like one in a medisBval dream I paused 
before the western fagade with its beau- 
tiful sculpture, a mass of figures repre- 
senting the life of the Virgin filling one 
entrance, statutes depicting the life of St. 
Anne adorning the other door, the main, 
or central entrance, being richly oma- 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

mented as the Porte du Judgement. And 
above all these entrances runs the long 
gallery filled with statnes of the Kings of 
Jndah, over which the Madonna looks 
down between two herald angels. 

Even if the Devil is said to have been 
asked to help the blacksmith who 
wrought the ironwork on the doors, I 
found no difficulty in making my way into 
the wonderful solemnity of the interior, 
where the sunlight through the rose win- 
dows touched to deeper scarlet the robes 
of the Cardinal upon his throne, and 
seemed to quicken into life the stone 
leaves upon the capitals of the gigantic 
columns, which were copied by the sculptor 
from the leaves of the woods and fields 
near Paris. 

After mass was over I emerged from 
the heavy clouds of incense, and then fol- 
lowed the old bell-ringer up the winding 
stairway of the south tower. In the 

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SEEING EUEOPE ON SIXTY DOLLAES 

gloom of the old tower I expected every 
moment to stumble over Victor Hugo's 
one-eyed, hump-backed bell-ringer, Quasi- 
modo. I stood by almost reverently as 
the old bell, which Napoleon brought back 
with him to Paris from Moscow as a 
trophy of war, gave out its deep and 
splendid tones. The pigeons, long accus- 
tomed to the bells in the towers, were not 
in the least frightened from their roosts 
among the pinnacles and grinning gar- 
goyles, but kept on cooing among the gro- 
tesque monsters of these ecclesiastical 
heights, from which all Paris could be 
seen, like a garden set with palaces. 

After luncheon I hurried to the Tomb 
of Napoleon, which was opened for the 
admission of the public on Sunday, from 
twelve to three, and gazed upon the great 
sarcophagus hewn out of a single block 
of granite, in which lies the remains of 
^^the little Corporal.'^ The tomb is not 

79 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

a dark-like crypt, but a temple of marble 
and gold, in which the purple and amber 
light from the stained-glass windows falls 
upon the sarcophagus and figures of vic- 
tory like a royal garment of gauze. 

Later in the afternoon I paid a visit to 
the Luxembourg art gallery, and still 
later, 1 contrived to reach Versailles by 
tram, where the palace and park were 
thronged with visitors. After forming a 
rather hurried idea of the grand historical 
history of France, I arrived at the art 
gallery, just half an hour before it closed 
for the day. The remainder of the after- 
noon I spent in wandering through the 
gardens, with the phantom of Marie An- 
toinette at my heels in the Little Trianon. 
Then back again to Paris, with its fairy 
lights agleam. After dinner at the pen- 
sion, I peeped into several of the cafes 
chantants, and finished up at the Folies 
Bergeres, where a ballet in pink tights 

80 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

and tinsel delighted the eye of the Sab- 
bath breakers. In comparison to the con- 
tinental Sunday, England is a graveyard. 

My finances being at a low ebb on Mon- 
day morning, I had to content myself by 
wandering throngh some of the fashion 
marts. I also revisited the Place de la 
Bastille, the site of the ancient fortress 
and prison of the Bastille, which was de- 
stroyed in 1789. After luncheon I accom- 
panied M. A. to the Latin Quarter, where 
he finally succeeded in finding a room, 
combination studio and bedroom, for 
about six dollars by the month. 

Eeturning to the pension, I paused to 
peer through the window of the Morgue, 
where the body of a young woman, a sui- 
cide, was revealed to public gaze. She 
had leapt to her death from Pont Notre 
Dame during the night, and her body had 
been dragged from the Seine early that 
morning. Hundreds paused to look at the 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLAES 

young suicide, then passed on, some in 
laughter, a few in tears. The girl's face 
was beautiful, even in death. 

By 6 o'clock I was on my return journey 
to London, with some little cash still in 
hand. My expenses for the two and a 
half days in Paris, including my railway 
fare from London and return, were: 

Eound trip ticket from London $ 6.32 

Supper on Channel steamer, one shilling . .24 
Cab fare from Gare du Nord to the 

pension 40 

Three breakfasts 36 

Three luncheons, averaging 83 centimes . .48 

Two dinners 40 

Koom rent 1.95 

Omnibus and tram fares 44 

Theater tickets and incidentals 1.29 

$11.88 



82 



FEOM LONDON BEIDGE TO WIND- 
SOE CASTLE 

The distance from London Bridge to 
Windsor Castle is only eighteen miles as 
the crow flies ; of course, it is still farther 
removed if one follows the river Thames, 
which winds through the country-side like 
a golden serpent. 

On a summer's day, beneath an Italian 
sky, I boarded the steam barge in the 
shadow of the old bridge (to me, some- 
how, the bridge is always peopled with 
characters from Dickens, especially dur- 
ing the long twilight season — Nancy Sikes, 
for instance, hurrying homeward. The 
dome of St. Paul's Cathedral, it may be 
remembered, was the last bit of London as 
seen by Little Nell as she took to the coun- 
try side). 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

Passing Somerset House and Cleo- 
patra's Needle, the barge glided by the 
stately Houses of Parliament. A little 
to the left the twin towers of Westminster 
Abbey rose above the site once occu- 
pied by a temple dedicated by the early 
Eomans to Apollo. The first Christian 
church was erected on this spot in 610. 

Arriving at Putney, eight miles up the 
river, I took to the verdant banks, walk- 
ing through many a wildwood, past 
charming estates, up to the threshold of 
the good Queen's battlemented domicile, 
where one may peer through the castle 
gates, and, beholding a cat basking in the 
sunshine, recall the Mother Goose ditty 
of nursery days: 

''Pussy eat, pussy cat, where have you been? 
I've been to London to visit the Queen. 
Pussy cat, pussy cat, what did you do there ? 
I frightened a little mouse under the Queen's 
chair." 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

Following the footpath from Putney, 
which is about as tortuous in its ram- 
blings as the river, I passed the home of 
the Kitcat Club, of which Pope and Swift 
were members, arriving shortly at Kew 
Gardens. Not far from the river stands 
the old Kew Church where Gainsborough 
lies buried, and nearby is the entrance to 
what was once the pleasure grounds of 
Kew Palace, the royal residence of James 
I, but now, as everybody knows, made 
over into the most interesting, if not the 
largest, botanical gardens in the world. 
Through the trees can be seen Zion House, 
at one time the home of Lady Jane 
Grey. 

Farther along, the banks of the river 
are shaded with the majestic oak, with 
roots so enormous that one may sit among 
them with as much ease as in a rustic 
chair. Here the small boy is apt to be in 
evidence, the barefoot boy with cheek of 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLAES 

tan, who delights in luring the minnows 
from the sluggish water by the riverside 
with a string and wriggling worm. To 
pass from the freedom of the river to im- 
prisonment in a glass jar the minnow 
must needs pass through a rather trying 
experiment. What must be the disap- 
pointment of the creature, after swallow- 
ing a big fat worm, to be jerked ashore, 
and then have the appetizing worm drawn 
from its inner s still wriggling? This was 
the rather lame argument I ventured to 
one youthful Izaae Walton, but I was 
promptly assured that ^^fish 'ad no sense 
enyway.^' Using no hooks, the process 
after all was most humane. 

Eichmond is delightfully situated; a 
royal abiding-place in Anglo-Saxon times, 
the home of the Plantagenets and the 
Tudors, now a fashionable suburb. Near- 
by is Twickenham, where Pope lived and 
died. Passing through Kingston you ar- 

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SEEING EUEOPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

rive at Hampton Palace, once the resi- 
dence of King Henry VIH, bnilt by Car- 
dinal Wolsey, where medallions by Rob- 
bia, ceilings by Verrio, rare tapestries, 
and enjoyable historical association, at- 
tract thousands of visitors, who wander 
through the terraced gardens, compare 
modern time-pieces with the ancient sun- 
dial, and ask questions of the red-coated 
guards when there is nothing else left for 
them to do. 

Taking to the fields a little beyond 
Hampton Court, I set my face towards 
Windsor Castle. Keeping to the path, 
through bramble and mead, once passing a 
deer rubbing its nose against the rough 
bark of an oak tree, partly concealed by a 
hawthorn hedge, I soon caught sight of 
the dark towers of the castle, looming 
gaunt against the western sky. 

When I found myself beside the Thames 
once more, I was close upon Eton College. 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

The departure of day was being signaled 
by roseate bnes in the west, the bleating 
of sheep as they were being driven by the 
shepherd to their pens, and the pealing of 
the even-song bells. I passed by the 
chapel, over the cobblestones of the court- 
yard, into the grand vestibule of the 
school, where the names of the students 
who have died for their country were con- 
spicuous upon brass tablets. But the 
great oak doors were being closed for the 
night, and I hurried on toward the town, 
whose houses appeared quaint and low in 
the gathering twilight, the several prin- 
cipal thoroughfares winding close around 
the castle. 

I had just reached the main entrance 
to the castle when a carriage drove by, 
and for the first and last time I beheld 
England's ruler. Empress Victoria, who 
was returning in haste, it seemed to me, 
from a late afternoon drive to Frogmore. 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

I enjoyed a splendid view of the Queen in 
her open carriage, drawn by two splendid 
bays. I knew her at once, for she ap- 
peared to have just stepped ont of the 
chromo which adorned my landlady's par- 
lor in Shepherd Street. Naturally I was 
a bit disappointed in not seeing a mad 
populace about, shouting, ^^Long Live # 
the Queen,'' as they all do in romantic 
melodramas and historical novels. 

Here was an Empress passing my way, 
in a plain costume of black, with a most s,. 
gentle and noble countenance, framed by 
a little black bonnet, which was held in 
place by black silk ribbons tied under her 
chin. I raised my hat and bowed, and the ^ 
Queen smiled and nodded her head. Al- 
though an ardent republican, neverthe- 
less, I was much puffed up over being no- 
ticed by a queen. I was weary with walk- 
ing, and two shillings was all that I had 
in my pockets ; but I felt satisfied in hav- 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

ing accomplislied more than the Pussy 
Cat in the nursery rhyme, who only 
^^ frightened a little mouse nnder the 
Queen's chair.'' 

After the rumble of the royal equipage 
had died away, I gazed from the parapets 
of the castle, over the tops of the lime 
trees, where myriads of blackbirds were 
putting on their night-caps, as night let 
down a curtain of purplish haze. 

The cheery light from a little tea shop, 
just outside the castle gates, attracted my 
attention. Within I found a pleasant- 
faced Swiss woman in charge, and over a 
pot of tea, a plate of scones, and some 
blackberry jam (all for fivepence), I 
learned that she had been the companion 
of Mrs. Margaret Oliphant, the Queen's 
favorite novelist, and that many of the 
furnishings and pictures which adorned 
the living rooms over the shop had be- 
longed to the author of ^^The Quiet 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

Heart," who died in June, 1897, at 
Windsor. 

When I emerged from the tea shop ' ' the 
sun in splendor had sank to rest, and gol- 
den-barred the whole broad west; when, 
reaching forth, an unseen hand let down 
the golden bars.'' 



91 



THE LITTLE VILLAGE BY THE SEA 

The candles at Eottingdean, the quaint 
little village by the sea, burn dimly between 
two sheltering, lavender-tinted knolls of 
the South downs, bnt their glow betimes 
has drawn genius as moths to the flame. 

The village is of great antiquity. In the 
Domesday Book one reads that the manor 
of ^^Eokingden" was once held by Hugh, 
the son of William de Warrenne, having 
formerly been in the possession of the 
Earl of Godwin. 

I reached the village after a walk of five 
miles along the chalk cliffs, starting at 
Brighton, that brisk, bustling seaport, as 
cosmopolitan as Atlantic City, where the 
aristocracy and the ^ dripper" from Lon- 
don while away the salt-laden hours dur- 
ing their respective seasons. The sea 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

gulls, which haunt the cliffs in thousands, 
will keep one company during the walk. 
The sea, too, makes a weird sound ; not the 
booming of the sea as against the sandy 
coast of the Atlantic ocean on our side, but 
the screech and hiss of water like the voice 
of the fiends. The coast formation here 
is of pebbles, and the rush of the water, 
receding after each breaker, gives forth 
this peculiar, eternal sound. 

From Beacon Hill, overlooking Eotting- 
dean, the panorama is freighted with strik- 
ing bits of landscape and waterscape, 
framed in graphic colors. The South 
downs cluster on one side of you in velvety 
smoothness against the sky, the hills being 
cut up into a sort of patchwork by the 
numerous winding paths, as if seared by 
red-hot irons. Here and there is a de- 
serted windmill, whose broken sails flap 
and beat against the wind in empty soli- 
tude. The morning sun seems first to seek 

93 



SEEING EUEOPE ON SIXTY DOLLAES 

the sea, while the downs frown in shadows ; 
then a shaft of fresh radiance meanders 
over the hilltops, deepening the gloom of 
the valleys, through which the cloud 
shadows play hide and seek, and sending 
the skylarks caroling towards the zenith 
(Those of you who have never heard the 
lark rising in a thrill of song, like a rocket 
of melody, from the Sussex downs, have 
much to look forward to). When the 
shadows in the valleys fade into palest 
mauve, when the sea burns like molten sil- 
ver, when the cliffs stand out immaculate 
under their emerald crowns, then the day 
may be said to have been gloriously begun. 
Who would not seek retreat from wor- 
ries and noise in such a pleasant little cor- 
ner of the world as Eottingdean? The 
old tavern, where a rosy-cheeked barmaid 
serves ^alf-and-'alf, the post-office, the 
sweet-shop, the bootmaker, and the candle- 
stick-maker, hug the curbing of the prin- 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

cipal thoroughfare, which terminates at the 
duck-pond, whose waters reflect the square 
flint tower of St. Margaret's Church. The 
element of the sea also enters into the com- 
position of the village, and at the bottom 
of the street, in a gap of the cliffs, idles 
the weather-beaten fishermen, who, when 
not grumbling at the treacherous winds of 
the English Channel, are weaving their 
tales of adventures at sea. 

Best of all, hereabouts, is after the lark 
has nestled for the night in the broom, 
when the nightingale takes up its harp of 
melody. You can hear the first warble of 
this bewitching migratory bird as the shep- 
herd on the hillside starts homeward with 
his flock, and the lights begin to glimmer in 
the cottage windows. How enchanting 
those strains of strange plaintiveness and 
passionate ecstasy! 

The parish church of St. Margaret's is 
of Saxon origin, and it harbors some very 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLAES 

interesting brasses and fignre-heads. In 
the shadow of one of the flint buttresses, 
where the primroses grow, is the grave of 
William Black, the novelist. The piazza 
of the vicarage is vine-covered, through 
which, by night, filters the light from the 
study window, by which once sat Dr. 
Hooker. The Duke of Wellington, Bul- 
wer-Lytton, and Cardinal Manning also 
spent some days of their youth here. 
One may imagine these young men, in their 
respective days, stealing away from their 
books, out into the inspiration of such en- 
chanting nights as come to Eottingdean, 
perchance to dream. To Bulwer-Lytton 
may have come the first vision of a resur- 
rected Pompeii, while the youthful Welling- 
ton may have heard, in prophetic tones, the 
conquering of mighty hosts in the rush and 
scream of the sea at the foot of the cliffs ; 
while the hills declared the glory of the 
Lord to Cardinal Manning. 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

In later years, William Black was ac- 
customed to wander over the downs, and 
Sir Edward Bnrne-Jones also fonnd in- 
spiration here for his brash in the wistfnl, 
sorrowing beauty of the pre-Eaphaelite 
School. His studio stands on the edge of 
the village green, Beacon Hill rising al- 
most from the very back door, on its sum- 
mit an old windmill in gaunt relief. Just 
across the way, half hidden by a brick wall, 
stands ^^The Elms,'' the home of Eudyard 
Kipling, whom I first saw as he leaned out 
of his study window one Sunday, waving 
his hand to the rector of St. Margaret's, 
who was marching at the head of some an- 
nual church parade, in the wake of the 
village band. 

Mr. Kipling was enjoying the height of 
his popularity, and ^^The Elms" had be- 
come the mecca for many tourists, the ma- 
jority coming from Brighton by coach, 
there being no other means of travel, ex- 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

cept on foot. Of course very few ever got 
any farther than the front gate. If any 
member of the family, or even a maid-serv- 
ant, chanced to appear at the large bay 
window overlooking the village green, there 
wonld be a concerted craning of necks on 
the part of everybody. 

I had paused before the window of a 
sweet-stuff shop, where tempting loUypops 
were displayed for four farthings, when I 
heard a passer-by exclaim, ^^Here he 
comes ! ' ' Now as there was only one ^ ^ he ' ' 
in the village at that time to whom this re- 
mark might appropriately be applied, I 
turned to gaze at Mr. Kipling at close 
range. He was accompanied by Sir Philip 
Burne-Jones, who was then occupying his 
father ^s studio, and they were coming 
down the middle of the street at a lively 
gait. Mr. Kipling had his pipe clenched 
between his teeth, and his cap drawn well 
over his eyes. 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

After they had passed, I joined enthu- 
siastically in the crowd of the curious, all 
grown-ups, who were following like chil- 
dren at their heels. One was really 
tempted to rush up to Mr. Kipling, grab 
him by the arm, and repeat : 

^' 'Ere's a beggar with a bullet through 'is 
spleen ; 
'E's chawin' up the ground, an' 'e's kickin' 

all around; 
For Gawd's sake git the water, Gunga Din!" 

No one seemed to know just why we 
should follow Mr. Kipling instead of the 
rector, with his band, who were just now 
passing through the portals of the church; 
but we kept on to the beach, where all sorts 
of craft were rocking with the tide. A 
canvas canoe was drying on the pebbles, 
bottom-side up, in which Mr. Kipling and 
Sir Philip seemed to be keenly interested. 

Some of us stood rather sheepishly to 
one side, while the rest, without the slight- 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

est temerity, gathered about the canoe to 
hear what ^^he'^ was saying to the owner. 
In a few minutes, the author and artist re- 
traced their steps to ^^The Elms,'^ the 
smoke pouring from Mr. Kipling's pipe 
like fumes from the funnel of a channel 
steamer. But not before a young lady 
from Chicago had gone through some mys- 
terious act, which had to do with Mr. Kip- 
ling 's coat-tail and a signet ring. 

We had seen this young person approach 
the author while his back was turned, and 
touch the end of his coat with the ring. 
She might have been a feminine anarchist 
for all we knew, lighting the fuse of a con- 
cealed bomb. The incident passed un- 
noticed on the part of Mr. Kipling. Later 
came the explanation. 

^^You see this ring,'' chirped the young 
thing in a confidential tone; *^well, it was 
a present from maw on — ^well, my last 
birthday, and I call it my ^Prominent Peo- 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

ple^ ring. It's far easier to touch prom- 
inent people with this ring when they're 
not looking than to go through a lot of red 
tape for their autographs. I'm on my 
way home now on a trip around the world, 
and you bet your life I've been busy with 
this ring. A list of names goes with it, 
and when I get back to Chicago I'll show 
it as a souvenir." 

A little northwest of Eottingdean the 
little hamlet of Ovingdean slumbers in a 
vale. Here stands the house made famous 
by Harrison Ainsworth, the novelist, for 
it was over the threshold of this old struc- 
ture that Charles II hurried on his es- 
cape to France. The ancient chimney- 
piece still remains in which the king was 
concealed while Colonel Gunter planned 
his escape. Eventually the unhappy mon- 
arch reached Shoreham, where Swiftsure, 
a small boat, carried him safely across the 

Channel. 

101 



f 



ALONG THE EIVER DARENTH 

Dartfoed is a lazy, smoky little town in 
Kent, nestling on the river Thames twenty 
miles southeast of London, with frequent 
trains from Charing Cross. About the 
only points of pietnresqneness within the 
town limits are an ancient inn, the parish 
chnrch, and a stone bridge, gray with li- 
chens, under which the river Darenth pnrls, 
fresh from its windings through glorious 
Kent. 

The inn, with its immense courtyard, 
flanked with stables and a low stoop, was 
so antiquated in appearance that the ar- 
rival of the pristine coach-and-four from 
London would have seemed quite in order. 
Instead, a cart, laden with carrots, rolled 
noisily through the gate, causing the hens 
to set up a cackle, while the burly driver 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

directed Ms attention to a prim little 
kitchen maid with a stentorian, ^^Well, 
miss, 'ow's the dinner comin' hon?" The 
horses were neighing in their stalls, the 
amorous pigeons cooing and fluttering 
among the low eaves of the stable as the 
farmers, in their smock-frocks, passed into 
the dining-room in single file. When I saw 
them devour slab after slab of juicy, 
bloody roast beef, I understood why their 
faces all appeared to have been painted 
over with a red brush. 

The King's Highway leads by the par- 
ish church, whose north tower was once 
used as a stronghold, commanding both the 
river and the Eoman way. The church 
structure, while dating from the Eoman 
period, has no unusual association, except 
that over its threshold, in 1422, the body of 
Henry V, the valiant hero of Agincourt, 
was received by the Bishop of Exeter. 
Then, too, beneath the old altar, before 

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whicli tlie Canterbury pilgrims were wont 
to bow in reverence, a Eoman coffin was 
once discovered, and when opened the form 
of a yonng woman was revealed, with 
tresses of gold, caught up with a coronet 
of pearls, the body being swathed in linen ; 
but when the air rushed in, the figure is 
said to have crumbled, and a heap of dust 
was all that remained. 

Eivers in England, compared with our 
broad expanse of inland streams, seem 
more like swift running brooks. The 
Darenth somewhat resembles a mountain 
stream, and the manner in which it darts 
and winds through the meadows, skimming 
along like a swallow, gives it a most pleas- 
ing individuality. 

I roamed along its banks from the limits 
of Dartford, through the willow and alder 
bushes, into the very bosom of Kent^s 
rural beauty, and found its course at times 
wildly picturesque. At one stage of its 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

journey to the Thames it turns an immense 
water-wheel at an enchanting little hamlet. 
This hamlet is deeply seclnded from the 
world. Here the men, sturdy-limbed and 
red-cheeked, toil at the grist mill, in the 
wheat and barley fields, and among the 
hops, while the women cook and sew and 
breed children; principally the latter, 
judging from the perfect swarm of tots 
romping about the duck-pond. And all 
through the quiet watches of the day, the 
bell in the tiny chapel on the hillside rings 
out the advent of 4ife and death, while the 
world throbs unknown somewhere else. 

I crept into the churchyard, where sev- 
eral generations from the hamlet are 
sleeping. Here was a newly-made grave, 
and upon a rude headstone was inscribed 
the name of an aged woman, who, I was 
told later, had never been beyond the 
golden wheat fields ; had never seen a loco- 
motive, much less gazed at the cross on 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

St. PauPs. She was the last of her fam- 
ily, and the little cottage, where she had 
spent fifty of her seventy odd years, was 
now dark and deserted. 

Just beyond the hamlet the river dashes 
and frets itself over stony ways. Near by 
I ran across the ruins of a Eoman villa, 
where recent excavations had brought to 
light many interesting finds. The founda- 
tion, still intact, lies many feet below the 
level of the sod, and the villa was doubt- 
less at one time of considerable note. The 
inner court, tesselated halls, and the bath, 
were all easily located at a glance, and 
some of the water pipes still remained, 
unimpaired by centuries. 

From now on the little river finds much 
to do; besides watering the miniature 
farms, it speeds the wheels of several 
other grist mills, and fills more than one 
pond to the brim. Now and then I ran 
across an isolated angler, luring the fickle 

106 




llie Cathedral of ]>sotre-Dame 



Page 77 



4 



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trout. The river is particularly fascina- 
ting when it makes a tortuous turn through 
a meadow; and unfortunate the silvery 
minnow which ventures from among the 
willows here, for these twists in the river, 
where shady and sun-kissed spots in the 
water abound, seem to be the favorite 
hunting place for the brilliantly plumaged 
kingfisher. 

I was glad to reach Faringham village, 
and more so to read a modest announce- 
ment that the postmistress would serve 
tea and rolls for sixpence. It was most 
restful in the garden, heavy with the fra- 
grance of roses, where refreshments were 
served, while a bullfinch kept up a lively 
serenade in the bushes. 

Eynesford, near the source of the Dar- 
enth, is another very old village, with 
quaint gabled cottages, stone bridges, and 
small terraced gardens at the rear of the 
dwellings, sloping down to the river's 

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SEEING EUEOPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

edge. I was struck all along by the tiny 
estates; like doll farms. But all the es- 
tates in Kent are small, owing to the Saxon 
custom of gavelkind, here still main- 
tained, by which the lands of a father dy- 
ing intestate, are divided among all the 
sons alike. 

It is a short but happy walk from Far- 
ingham to Eynesford, if one but follows a 
footpath through the valley, losing sight 
of the river betimes. It was at Eynes- 
ford, in the fast deepening twilight, that I 
ran suddenly upon the ruins of a castle, 
lying so near to the river that a moon, 
would have spanned the shallow water 
with a most fanciful shadow. 

I was totally unprepared for such a dis- 
covery, and never have I been able to find 
any historical record of this ruin, although 
one probably exists. The spectacle of the 
dismantled tower was an artistic climax 
to the pastoral scenes of the dayj but as I 

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SEEING EUEOPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

drew near to the tower I heard a gentle 
^^moo.'' The next moment a cow had 
thrust its head through what was evidently 
once a mnllioned window, near the base of 
the tower. Further investigation revealed 
the amazing fact that this bit of antiquity, 
where a mailed knight perhaps, at some 
time or other, ^^like an arrow through the 
archway sprang,'^ had been turned into a 
cowshed. 



109 



SHAKESPEARE'S TOWN 

SuKELY this cannot be the source of so 
much noise in the world ! You bask in the 
brilliant sunshine, with waving reeds about 
you and rooks sailing over your head, while 
the gentle wind frolics through the 
branches of the lime trees. Now and then 
there comes the distant shout of a shep- 
herd boy, or the rumble of a cart, stealing 
through the j)eaceful vale. Perhaps even 
now, beside the chanting waters, you are 
standing where once the immortal bard of 
Avon cast his tempting bait. 

**I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, 
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, 
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, 
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.'' 

Probably it was this very bank that the 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

poet had in mind when he wrote the above. 
Something inside of yon keeps sweeping 
your heart-strings, and yonr inclination is 
to' break forth into a song of exultation. 
You yearn to bum candles before the 
shrine of Shakespeare, or swing a golden 
bowl of incense over his tomb. 

And yet you observe the town folk go- 
ing about in the most ordinary manner, as 
though they had given a particular brand 
of soap, or pickles, to the world instead of 
^ ' a living-dead man, ' ' who found ' ' tongues 
in trees, books in running brooks, sermons 
in stones, and good in everything." The 
song dies upon your lips, and your whim- 
sical self returns moodily from its back- 
ward flight into dead centuries, as you 
realize that one nowadays must do Shakes- 
peare ^s town as one goes to market to buy 
a penny pig; look about, look about, then 
jiggety-jig! 

Three hundred years before the Norman 

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conquest, Stratford was described as a 
monastic town, rich in the pursuits of agri- 
culture. This was in the time of Ethelred, 
King of Mercia. In the Domesday Book 
of 1085 there are numerous signs of the 
old and new Stratford, and at the present 
day the roads carry out the story of con- 
servatism and progress. 

One may start from the memorial foun- 
tain, a rather classic looking monument, the 
gift of the late Mr. George W. Childs of 
Philadelphia, and proceed to Henley 
Street, where a three-gabled structure, the 
birthplace of Shakespeare, stands out in 
manifest quaintness. You enter and gaze 
upon the many relics ; a pipe, a folio yellow 
with age, a stirrup, a ring — they all be- 
longed to Will. The perfume of the old- 
fashioned garden at the rear of the house 
floats in through the open window, but just 
as you imagine yourself on a bed of red 
poppies, and prepare to conjure up bygone 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

scenes, the shriek of a locomotive meets 
your ears; and yon hnrry through the 
house, eager to escape the throng of ex- 
cursionists, which you feel in your bones 
is now being vomited forth from a third- 
class special. 

One's footsteps echo in the little, low- 
ceilinged bedroom where the soul of genius 
first saw the light of day, and where, per- 
haps, at a later date, Mrs. Shakespeare 
manipulated her slipper, for boys will be 
boys. 

''At first the infant, 
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms, 
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel 
And shining morning face, creeping like snail 
Unwillingly to school." 

Outside again, one may visit the market- 
place, where the town pump once reared 
its head, about which the good housewives 
gathered on a morning for their daily tit- 
tle-tattle; where ofiFenders were whipped 

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SEEING EUEOPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

in public, and proclamations read. One 
may fancy Jndith Shakespeare, whose 
house stands close by, repeating to the 
plebeian ears of the tradesman's wife the 
hearsay of the Court poet's doings in Lon- 
don-town. Instead, one overhears Miss 
Sarah Perkins of Kalamazoo, Michigan, 
U. S. A., declare: ^^I guess this town ain't 
got nothin' on Kalamazoo." And that 
word ^^ guess," current in Queen Eliza.- 
beth's time, returns to its native heath 
via the States, and is treated like a step- 
child. 

Shaking the dust of pilgrimage from 
one's sandals, a delightful visit is paid to 
the Memorial Building, which is stored 
with rare books and pictures. Then comes 
Shottery, a village wonderfully rural and 
picturesque. 

You take to a pathway beaten through 
the tangled mead, passing a finger-post, 
whose phantom-like hand points to the 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

modest thatched cottage of Anne Hatha- 
way, smothered in ivy, waist-deep in pop- 
pies, sunflowers and roses. The daylight 
filters in through the deepset, multi-paned 
window, painting the floor and walls with 
flecks of silver. An aged woman sits by 
the enchanting old fireplace, with its high 
mantel crowned with gleaming brass 
candlesticks (Mrs. Williams, a direct 
descendant of the Hathaway family, died 
in July, 1899), and her presence adds a 
touch of homeliness to the old-fashioned 
surroundings. One is permitted to climb 
the narrow stairway; and how you peep 
into dark, cobwebbed corners, as if expect- 
ing to see Will and Anne in fond embrace. 
The garden must have been an ideal place 
for spooning. 

^'Here we will sit and let the sounds of music 
Creep in our ear : soft stillness and the night 
Become the touches of sweet harmony. " 

Leaving Shottery by another footpath 

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whicli wreathes throngli the meadows, I 
finally reached the long avenne of pollard 
lime trees, which form a melancholy ap- 
proach to the porch of the Church of the 
Holy Trinity. The church seems to nestle 
under the elm and lime trees, trembling 
upon the very margin of the Avon. You 
gaze with reverent eyes upon Shakes- 
peare's tomb, and ^^ curst be he that 
moves my bones." Near the tomb is a 
tablet, upon which is inscribed the epitaph 
of one Eichard Hill, who departed this life 
in 1593: 

''He did not use to sweare, to glose, eather faigne 
His brother to defraud in bargaininge ; 
He would not strive to get excessive gaine 
In ani cloth or other kinde of thinge." 

The day was dying in this vale of tears 
as I stepped from the solitude of the 
church into the open, wandering among the 
crumbling headstones to the bank of the 

1X6 



SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

river. How lazily the shadows fell^ Al 
swan, pnre white, swam by; far beyond the 
oars of a passing boat caught the glint of 
the low descending sun, and momentarily 
let loose a myriad of opalescent jewels, 
which were swallowed up in the flood as 
the boat glided beneath the darksome 
arches of the stone bridge, over which the 
Elizabethans once trudged with malt and 
barley to the market-place. 

Daisies, white and gold, powdered the 
verdant banks, and a water lily, loosened 
from its hold in the upper rushes, swept 
by to its doom, plunging helplessly over 
the water-fall. The chimes were pealing 
in the old church tower as the last ray of 
sunlight touched with topaz the distant 
mountain-tops of Wales. Then came the 
stars, those ^'blessed candles of the night.'' 



117 



OVER THE HILLS OF SUREEY 

To the very edge of London does the 
charm of Surrey tremble in sweet simplic- 
ity. In her sequestered spots of loveliness 
genius has long dwelt, for her fascination 
is as eternal as her hills. Even the 
Romans built their villas beneath the tow- 
ering pines and alongside the winding 
rivers, the ruins of their habitations yet 
remaining, though leveled to the earth and 
locked in soil. 

Broad downs, miniature forests, racing 
mill-streams, quaint greens, and wide ex- 
panses of heather and gorse, are all about 
Dorking station, thirty miles from the 
murky city. The town of Dorking is a 
very old one, and it is mentioned in Domes- 
day Book. It lies snug at the junction of 
two valleys, and it is said that Julius Caesar 

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SEEING EUEOPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

took this route as lie led his army toward 
the Thames. The attributed derivation of 
the name is singularly varied ; some say the 
word Dorking sprang from the name of 
Thor, one of the Saxon gods. 

The river Mole sweeps the limits of the 
town. Dryden, in describing this river, 
said it ^^doth noozle underneath.'^ Milton 
called it ^^The sullen Mole, that runneth 
underneath. ' ' The river does really bur- 
row like a mole underground between 
Dorking and Letherhead. 

I lingered long by Castle Mill, where 
the water splashes over a mossy wheel; 
where the low hanging branches of the 
trees dip their wands in the stream. 

South of Dorking looms Glory Wood, 
and through the timber's classic columns 
of birch, oak and pine, I trudged to an 
opening in the forest, a veritable gateway 
of dreams. Here one beholds, as in sepa- 
rate pictures, framed in sapphire, the sleep- 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

ing village of Holmwood, tlie drab ruins of 
a castle, and tlie sparkle of a meandering 
brook, reflecting the sunlight like a mirror 
bidden among the nodding reeds. 

The hill-cbain of Surrey is silhouetted 
against the sky in all manner of shapes. 
Box Hill is perhaps the best known in the 
neighborhood, rising six hundred feet 
above the murmuring of the Mole, its 
chalky sides throwing into strong relief 
the stunted pine and box trees. The Den- 
bies also offer an extended view, and as 
the day was wonderfully clear, I could see 
the cross on St. PauPs and a fragment of 
the ramparts at Windsor. The crowning 
glory of Surrey, however, is Leith HiU, 
rising one thousand feet above the level 
of the sea, to which elevation I climbed 
midst the fragrance of the sweet-scented 
pine. 

Unlike other hills in this section, which 
are mostly all of chalk formation, enough 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

gravel and rock was thrown up in some far 
distant cataclysm to form Leith Hill, wMcli 
is covered with a dense and luxuriant vege- 
tation. The ascent is gradual, and I wan- 
dered up and up, it seemed, for hours, 
through the tall timber, so still ; now across 
a meadow patch, a leap over a deep ditch, 
and then through masses of wild heather 
and whortleberry shrubs. The village of 
Coldharbor hugs one side of the hill, a 
sandy cliff protecting it from the north 
and east winds. From the very summit 
the English Channel is visible ; a shimmer- 
ing line of mauve, seen through Shoreham 
Gap. The view withal extends over twelve 
counties, dotted with forty parish churches. 

There are many ways of descending, but 
far the prettier path twines through Lone- 
some Valley to Tilingbourne Waterfall; 
another path will take one through Eed- 
land's Wood, by the way of Mag's WelL 

Little wonder that the genius of Milton, 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

Tennyson, Wordsworth, and Meredith, 
foimd constant inspiration amid such 
sylvan beauty. Many come here from the 
grim depression of London to escape the 
grinding mills of modem civilization, and 
find renewed hope and life in the quiet se- 
clusion of shady nooks, sleepy hamlets, 
musical cascades, and sighing cedars. 

Happy the pilgrim who wanders, care- 
free, over the hills of Surrey. 



122 



OLD CHESTER 

Quaint^ old Chester! I beheld the city- 
first from the fields, in the distant bluish 
vagueness of the west country, its spires 
and gables peeping here and there above 
the low red walls which have encircled the 
city since the days of Marius, A. D. 3. 
Here Suetonius strengthened his forces 
while on his way to fight the enraged Iceni, 
led by Boadicea ; and the city has retained 
much of its Eoman semblance even to 
the dawn of the twentieth century. 

The municipal government ranks as the 
most ancient in the kingdom, the first char- 
ter having been granted by Eanulph the 
Good, before whose day the trade of the 
city was restricted to a brotherhood of 
merchants, somewhat akin to our modern 
trusts; yet history does not chronicle any 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

^^trust-buster" of that period, although 
they doubtless existed. 

The ecclesiastical history of Chester, 
which lies sixteen miles southeast of Liv- 
erpool, is most inviting. After the 
Norman conquest, the Earl of Lupus 
founded a Benedictine colony, which he 
nobly endowed, and to which was given 
the profits of the great feast of St. Wer- 
burgh. Before the abbey gate this feast 
was celebrated by merchants from far and 
near, who sold their wares in reed-covered 
booths. The law-breakers, too, flocked to 
the city, a privilege being granted to all 
malefactors, who were not to be arrested, 
notwithstanding their guilt, unless they 
committed some new offense. 

It is related that during one of these 
fairs, the EarPs castle was attacked by a 
Welsh army, but which fled before the ap- 
proach of what appeared to be a mighty 
regiment. The supposed regiment, how- 

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ever, turned out to be a multitude of musi- 
cians, minstrels and idlers. Thus the 
Chester minstrels are famous unto this 
day. 

Antiquities sit in every corner; Eoman 
altars, bits of highly colored pavements, 
coins of Vespasian and Trajan, and fu- 
neral vases, have been discovered. But we 
are now seeking entrance at the city'^ 
gates, and shortly afterwards, climbing the 
walls to the right of Eastgate. The walls 
extend two miles, forming an oblong quad- 
rangle, and from their heights, surrounded 
by a public walk, two miles in length, a 
vision of landscape beauty and classic 
monuments burst upon the eye. 

King Charles saw his army defeated on 
Eowton Moor, in 1647, from Phoenix 
Tower. Beyond the cluster of housetops, 
the river Dee, the hills of Broxton and 
Peckforton, the shattered remains of Bees- 
ton Castle, and the forest of Delamere, 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

show dim in a setting of smoky pearL 
Passing Northgate, one reaches Water- 
gate, below which lies the famous Eoodee, 
where military reviews and athletic sports 
have been held since the days of Eoman 
imperialism. Farther on, the Dee Mills 
flank the moss-grown bridge, and the fresh 
water of the river sweeps against a dam of 
rock, on the other side of which splashes 
the salty water from the sea. Just above, 
the huge effigy of Minerva frowns down 
upon the onlooker, and under the jutting 
sandstone is located King Edgar's Cave. 

Descending to the street at Eastgate, one 
may wander through the city proper and 
find much to admire, particularly in the 
shop windows along ^^The Eows.'' Here 
the carriage way is below the adjacent 
houses, and is bordered with shops, over 
which are piazzas, or ^^rows,'' for foot 
passengers. 
The Cathedral of St. Werburgh is an ir- 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

regular massive pile of stone, occu- 
pying the space once held by the Temple 
of Apollo. The nave, with its elaborately 
wrought stone roof, and the exquisitely 
carved choir, delight the eye. How softly 
the light falls through the magnificently 
colored windows; now a shaft of jonquil 
yellow, now a beam of rose red, now a 
burst of the purple of violets, all striking 
vivid notes of color amid the cloistered 
gloom. But there is another note now; 
a simple melody from the great organ 
sweeps through transept, chapel and clois- 
ter; at first, a flute-like tone, a single bar 
of ecstasy, then a glorious outburst of har- 
mony, as from a thousand angelic throats. 
Chester once boasted of two cathedrals. 
The Church of St. John, whose ruins stand 
just outside the city walls, is still of most 
noble proportions, and it is a fine speci- 
ment of Saxon architecture. This ruin 
rises high; the building of the edifice dates 

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SEEING EUEOPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

back to 689, when it was founded by 
King Etbelred. The ivy clings to the red 
stones, smooth with age, and through the 
crumbling columns can be seen the river 
Dee, riding majestically toward the sea. 
Such is a glimpse of Chester, the walled 
city of Cheshire. May you sleep long on 
the fertile mead of the county, with the 
river murmuring at your feet, the salt 
winds sweeping your face, the music of 
church chimes in your ears, and the min- 
strePs lay upon your lips! 



128 



EPPING FOREST 

Aemvikg at the village of CHngford, 
twenty miles north of London, and walk- 
ing past the ancient, ivy-clad church of the 
same name, one soon reaches the summit 
of Hawk Wood in Epping Forest. Before 
you stretches a panorama of tree and 
plain, massed, purplish, with the hills of 
Hertfordshire and Middlesex peeping, like 
humpbacked gnomes, far beyond. Queen 
Elizabeth's hunting lodge greets your eye 
on the left. You knock at the door, which 
soon swings upon hospitable hinges, and 
the genial keeper points out with pride, 
among numerous other curios, the old 
staircase where once, 'tis said, the viva- 
cious queen ascended on horseback. 

Emerging from the antique building, one 
passes beneath the thousand and one leafy 

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boughs of the singing beech trees, to the 
edge of Connaught Water, thence through 
the bramble to Cuckoo Brook, whose waters 
murmur amid overhanging willows, sing- 
ing the song of ages as it flows. Now you 
are wandering over Blackbush Plain, 
where the berries show luscious and ripe 
through the green filigree, and you hide in 
the thickets and watch the bird bandits 
purple their beaks in the unforbidden fruit. 
A tiny wren flits from twig to vine ; a black 
and white magpie wheels from the dense 
foliage of the oak and soars skyward, while 
the reed warblers flutter their wings in 
the sweet scent of their own little do- 
main. 

Passing up to Hill Wood, where the 
pale, satiny barked beech trees stand out 
like organ pipes against the azure of the 
horizon, one catches the gleam of the holly 
tree, of which Southey sang: 

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'^0, reader! hast thou ever stood to see 

The Holly tree^ 
The eye that contemplates it well perceives 

Its glossy leaves, 
Order 'd by an intelligence so wise, 
As might confuse the atheist's sophistries." 

You now take to a road, which wriggles 
through the green like a worm. Tramping 
along its grassy borders one soon reaches 
Eobin Hood Inn; and there, beneath the 
greenwood, in the grotesque shadow cast 
by the thatched roof, is served the inevi- 
table cup of tea. 

Everybody drinks tea in England, even 
the butterflies. At least, there was a jolly 
little beggar of a butterfly, or lepidoptera, 
with bedraggled wings, which alighted 
upon the rim of my cup, and she actually 
wet her feelers, or proboscis, in the bever- 
age, with as much relish seemingly as her 
human proto-type in a drawing-room in 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

Mayfair. Then away she flew, tea tipsy 
no doubt, to tell her butterfly sisters of a 
certain strange concoction that looked like 
muddy water and tasted like medicine, but 
which was quite palatable after one became 
accustomed to it. 

One is prone to linger on New Eoad, 
with eyes peering into the cool depths of 
Little Monk Wood. At Broom Hill you 
step suddenly into an almost primitive 
wilderness of underbrush, where delight- 
ful daubs of color are thrown by the red, 
brown and gray fungi, and the golden 
gorse. An ideal spot, one might imagine, 
for Mab and her elves to assemble in a 
nocturnal ballet, with fire-flies as foot- 
lights, crickets fiddling away from dear 
life, and the haughty little caterpillar act- 
ing as director. 

Once the hunting ground of kings and 
queens, the lurking place of highwaymen, 
now the happy concourse for ^^Arry'^ and 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

^^Arriet," the forest was long before the 
stronghold of the Britons, under Boadicea, 
their feminine leader/ who fought against 
Suetonius, the Eoman Governor ; and who, 
as she drove to battle, cried: ^^No longer 
will I, a woman, bow beneath the Eoman 
yoke; let men live slaves if they will!" 
But when night came, poor Boadicea was 
fleeing in her chariot over the mangled 
bodies of her vanquished army. 

The bulwarks of Loughton and Ambres- 
bury are, therefore, of some peculiar inter- 
est, studded now with towering beech and 
oak, the outline of defense showing 
distinctly to the eye. So closely do the 
giants of the forest intermingle that an 
eternal twilight seems to mark the spot 
by day, and the impenetrable gloom of a 
Lunar chasm by night. 

A feeling of veneration steals over you 
as you stand, dreaming of the warrior 
queen and her brave followers, whose dust 

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SEEING EUEOPE ON SIXTY DOLLAES 

perhaps ages ago mingled with the soil 
far beneath ; and it takes nothing less than 
the voice of the east wind in the trees to 
start your fancies going, like flint to tin- 
der. Or, perhaps, it is the lamentation of 
the dead leaves upon the ground, driven by 
the wind, which brings into fantastical life, 
on one side of you, the gathering of the 
archers and the flight of the arrows ; or the 
rising of the mist from the lowlands, 
through which a procession of phantoms 
passes over and beyond the glade. There 
they go! Tatooed Britons, Vikings, Ro- 
man soldiers, Saxons, Normans, Celts, ab- 
bots, monarchs, queens, and peasants, too, 
— pilgrims of mist, their trailing garments 
dyed blood-red in the rays of the sinking 
sun. Finally night receives them in her 
sheltering mantle, while the moon peeps 
above the ragged treetops like a golden 
disc. 
Passing from under the forest's chimer- 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

ical canopy, through the marshes, by a 
silent pool, you take reluctantly a farewell 
glance at the city of green; while in the 
branches of a gnarled oak, standing like a 
grim sentinel at nature's gateway, 

*'The moping owl doth to the moon complain 
Of such as, wandering near her sacred bower, 
Molest her ancient, solitary reign/' 



135 



AN EXCUESION IN LETTEES 

In a certain corner of the British Mu- 
seum, aloof from the stare of the painted 
eyes of the soul of the Egyptian mummies, 
and the supercilious eyes of Grecian deities, 
lies a world of letters, worthy of every 
pilgrim's attention. It is designated in 
small letters, thus: ^^ Literary Auto- 
graphs/' Of course one has to trace the 
varied scrawls of genius through the pro- 
tecting glass, but the task is well worth the 
pleasure it affords. You find yourself 
smiling with Swift, sighing with Byron in 
his loneliness; and with some indignation 
towards the oppressors you repeat the 
words of John Dryden, who, in 1682, wrote 
to Lawrence Hyde, First Lord of the 
Treasury, as follows : 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

I know not whether my Lord Sunderland has 
interceded with your Lordship for half a yeare 
of my salary. But I have two other advocates, 
my extreame wants, even almost to arresting, and 
my ill health. , . . If I darst, I wou'd plead 
but little merit and some hazards of my 
life . . . but I onely think I merite not to 
sterve. ... Be pleased to looke on me with 
the eye of compassion; some small payment 
wou'd render my condition easy. The King is 
not unsatisfyed with me, the Duke has often 
promised me his assistance; and your Lordship 
is the conduit through which their favours passe : 
Either in the Customes or the Appeales of the 
Excise, or some other way: meanes cannot be 
wanting if you please to have the will. 'Tis 
enough for one age to have neglected Mr. Cowley 
and sterv'd Mr. Butler. 

In a letter to his solicitor, Lord Byron 
sets forth his pecuniary difficulties. An 
alien from his native land, his voice rises 
like a cry from the wilderness. He writes 
with a blazing pen: 

It is in the power of God, the Devil, and Man, 

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SEEING EUEOPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

r 

to make me poor and miserable, but neither the 
second nor the third shall make me sell New- 
stead, and by the aid of the first, I will perse- 
vere in this resolution. ''My father's house shall 
not be made a den of thieves." Newstead shall 
not be sold. I am some thousand miles from 
home, with few resources, and the prospect of 
their daily becoming less. I have neither friend 
nor counsellor, my only English servant departs 
with this letter; my situation is forlorn enough 
for a man of my birth and former expectations ; 
do not mistake this for a complaint, however. I 
state the simple fact, and will never degrade 
myself by lamentations. 

Jonathan Swift penned a playful letter 
in Dublin on February 29, 1727, to one, 
Martha Blount. He begins : 

I long to see you a London lady, where you 
are forc'd to wear whole cloathes, and visit in 
a chair, for which you must starve next summer 
at Petersham with a mantua out at the sides, 
and spunge once a week at our house without 
ever inviting us in a whole season to a cow-heel 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

at home. I wish you would bring Mr. Pope over 
with you when you come, but we will leave 
Mr; Gay to his beggars and his operaes till he 
is able to pay his club. 

Charles Dickens was under the shadow 
of death when he dashed off this note to 
Charles Kent, Esq., from Gad's Hill Place, 
on June 8, 1870: 

To-morrow is a very bad day for me to make 
a call . . . but I hope I may be ready for 
you at three o'clock. If I can't be — ^why then 
I shan't be. 

Forty-one years previous to this note, 
Sir David Wilkie wrote to Percy Nursey 
of an unknown writer, whose star was jnst 
rising, and one trembles at what might 
have been the fate of Sir Walter Scott's 
most popular romance. 

You may probably have heard of the new 
novel that has been expected from the great un- 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

known. It is known as Ivan-Hoe, but I hear it 
has met with a disaster. A Leith ship that had 
on board the copies that were to supply the Lon- 
don market, in its passage, a few days ago, 
sprung a leak, and the copies, if not the ship, 
are said to have been all destroyed. It is said 
to be a very fine thing ; the scene is in Sherwood 
forest and some of the characters are to be 
Robin Hood and Little John, etc., with the man- 
ners and descriptions entirely English. 

Samuel Coleridge wrote an interesting 
letter to Basil Montague on February 1, 
1826, concerning the doctrines of Edward 
Irving : 

But as I do not understand, I do not judge — 
but am willing to believe, that as preached by 
Mr. Irving, it will be to edification, tho ' for my- 
self, I am not ashamed to say, that a single 
Chapter of St. Paul's Epistles or St. John's 
Gospel, are of more value to me, in light, in 
life, in love, in comfort, than the books of the 
Apocalypse, of Daniel, and Zachariah, all to- 
gether. In fact, I scarcely know what to make 
even of the second coming of our Lord. Is he 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

not ''my Lord and my God"? Is there aught 
good in the soul, and he not a Dweller there? 

To H. N. Coleridge, the poet's son, Wil- 
liam Wordsworth wrote on July 29, 1834, 
eight years after the foregoing epistle, 
sympathizing with him in the loss of his 
father : 

I cannot give way to the expression of my 
feelings upon this mournful occasion ; I have not 
the strength of mind to do so. The last year has 
thinned off so many of my friends, young and 
old . . . that it would be no kindness to 
you were I to yield. Solemn and sad thoughts 
and remembrances are pressing upon me. It is 
nearly forty years since I first became acquainted 
with him whom we have just lost; and though 
. . . I have seen little of him for the last 
twenty years, his mind has been habitually pres- 
ent with me. 

Charles Lamb, in a note to John Clare, 
penned on August 31, 1822, flits from the 
sublime to the ridiculous. 

I send you two little volumes of my spare 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

hours. They are of all sorts ; there is a Metho- 
dist hymn for Sundays, and a f aree for Saturday 
night. Pray give them a place on your shelf. 
. . . Since I saw you, I have been in France 
and have eaten frogs. The nicest little rabbity 
things you ever tasted. Do look about for them. 
Make Mrs. Clare pick off the hind quarters, boil 
them plain, with parsley and butter. The fore 
quarters are not so good. She may let them hop 
off by themselves. 

On February 6, 1832, Thomas Carlyle 
wrote a note to Macvey Napier, asking 
leave to review Ebenezer Elliott's ^^Corn 
Law Ehymes'' for the Edinburgh Review. 
He says : 

His remarks have more of sincereity and genu- 
ine natural fire than anything that has come in 
my way of late. ... I would also willingly 
do the unknown man a kindness, or rather a 
piece of justice; for he is what so few are — a 
man and no clothes-horse. 

Later on, he alludes to his failure to find 
a publisher for his ^^ Sartor Resartus.'' 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

I have given up the opinion of hawking my 
little MS. book about any further. For a long 
time it has lain quietly in its drawer, waiting for 
a better day. The book-selling trade seems on 
the edge of dissolution. The force of Puffing can 
no farther go, yet Bankruptcy clamours at every 
door; sad fate! to serve the Devil and get no 
wages from him ! 

Alexander Pope's epistle to the Eev. 
William Warburton, written on June 18, 
1735, starts off as follows: 

This letter, Dear Sir, will be extremely laconic. 
I shall stay in London this month, therefore send 
me full powers and instructions, and I will re- 
ceive and dispose of yr money. 

Referring to Lord Bollingbroke, he con- 
tinues : 

He went to Calais four days since; with the 
strongest purpose never to return. The Learned 
world will gain by what the Political World has 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

lost ; which to you and me is a consolatory con- 
sideration. 



His last words are: 

Adieu, Dear Sir, and forgive me that I repeat 
ye only thing I have to say, that I am wholly 
yours. 

Edward Gibbon, on June 30, 1788, wrote 
a delightful letter to his Aunt Hester, upon 
his departure for Lausanne : 

Your good wishes and advice will not, I 
trust, be thrown away on the barren soil; and 
whatever you may have been told of my opin- 
ions, I can assure you with truth that I consider 
Religion as the best guide of youth, and the best 
support of old age; that I firmly believe, there 
is less real happiness in the business and pleas- 
ures of the World, than in the life, which you 
have chosen, of devotion and retirement. 

Great historians were not exempt from 
petty tribulations, as evidenced when 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

David Hume, on July 8, 1766, wrote the 
following to Eichard Davenport, in refer- 
ence to the proposal to obtain a pension 
from the Government for Jean Jacques 
Eonssean: 

I see that this whole affair is a Complication 
of Wickedness and Madness; and you may be- 
lieve I heartily repent that I ever had any con- 
nexion with so pernicious and dangerous a Man. 
He has evidently been all along courting, from 
ostentation, an Opportunity of refusing a Pen- 
sion from the King, and at the same time of 
picking a Quarrel with me, in order to cancel 
at once all his past Obligations to me. 

Lord Macaulay was also burdened in 
spirit when he wrote to Macvey Napier, on 
July 20, 1838, in relation to Brougham's 
share in the Edinburgh Review, as follows : 

As to Brougham's feelings towards myself, I 
know and have known for a long time that he 
hates me. For during the last ten years if I 
have gained any reputation either in politics or 

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SEEING EUEOPE ON SIXTY DOLLAES 

letters, if I have had any success in life, it has 
been without his help or countenance, and even 
in spite of his utmost exertions to keep me down 
. . . I will not, unless I am compelled, make 
any public attack on him. But ... I 
neither love him nor fear him. 

On October 31, 1779, William Cowper 
wrote to the Eev. William Unwin, concern- 
ing Dr. Johnson's ^^ Lives of the Poets.'' 

With one exception, and that a swingeing one, 
I think he has acquitted himself with his usual 
good sense and sufficiency. His treatment of 
Milton is unmerciful to the last Degree. A Pen- 
sioner is not likely to spare a Republican, and 
the Doctor, in order, I suppose, to convince his 
royal Patron of the sincerity of his Monarchical 
Principals, has belabored that great Poet's char- 
acter with the most Industrious Cruelty. I am 
convinced by the way that he has no ear for 
poetical parts, or that it was stopped by preju- 
dice against the Harmony of Milton's. Oh! I 
could thresh his old jacket till I made his pension 
jingle in his pocket. 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

There is an interesting letter from Wil- 
liam Makepeace Thackeray, dated Septem- 
ber 12, 1851, to T. W. Gibbs, in which the 
novelist refers to some passage in Sterne's 
Letters and his ^^Bramine's Journal' ': 

He wasn't dying, but lying I'm afraid — God 
help him — a fiercer and wickeder man it is diffi- 
cult to read of ... of course, any man is 
welcome to believe as he likes for me except a 
parson: I can't help looking upon Sniff and 
Sterne as a couple of traitors and renegades 
. . . with a scornful pity for them in spite 
of their genius and greatness. 

On November 29, 1868, Eobert Browning 
replied to William G. Kingsland, regard- 
ing some thrust from the literary critics, 
as follows: 

I can have little doubt that my wi'iting has 
been, in the main, too hard for many I should 
have been pleased to communicate with, but I 
never designedly tried to puzzle people, as some 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

of my critics have supposed. On the other hand, 
I never pretended to offer such literature as 
vrould be a substitute for a cigar, or a game at 
dominoes, to an idle man. 

Lord Lytton, in a note to Macvey Na- 
pier, writes: 

The singleness with which, as a novelist, I 
have contended against all prejudice and all 
hypocrisy, has of course gained me enemies 
. . . and all envy and all scorn are vented 
more successfully on works like mine than those 
of a graver nature. 

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, penned a note 
to W. C. Bennett on October 22, 1864, witb 
a general sketch of the mail matter which 
awaited him in London upon his return 
from abroad. He includes, in brackets, 
*^Ms. poems,'' ^'printed proposals for 
poems," ^^ requests for subscriptions, etc.,'^ 
^^ letters for autographs," ^^ anonymous in- 
solent letters," and ^ betters asking explan- 
ation of particular passages." In the 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

right-hand corner of the page he writes: 
^^Look at this pile which, on my return 
from abroad, I find heaped on my table"; 
concluding with, ^^ Believe me, tho^ penny- 
post maddened, yours ever.'* 



149 



WALTHAM ABBEY 

^'To "Wynsore, to Waltam, 
To Ely, to Caultam, 
Bare-footed and bare-legged apace." 

— Old Pilgrim's Song. 

The Abbey Chnrcli of Waltbam is one 
of the most interesting ehnrclies in Eng- 
land, although not on the beaten path of 
the average tourist ; and yet it is only eight- 
een miles from London, near the royal 
forest of Epping. 

I took to the fields at Waltham Cross, 
and followed the footpath over the meads 
to the banks of the river Lea, which is 
spanned by a modern bridge, then up the 
narrow street of the old village which 
clusters about the ancient abbey. 

The parish of Waltham is first men- 
tioned in the time of King Canute, its 

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owner then being Tovi, the standard bearer 
to that famous monarch. After the death 
of Tovi it became crown property, and 
King Edward the Confessor bestowed it 
on Harold, on condition that he should 
build a monastery. And Harold seemed to 
have planned to make the monastery the 
very glory of England, second not even to 
his brother's fabric at Westminster. 

Waltham made a deep impression upon 
the national mind, for in the breast of 
Harold beat the heart of England. The 
Holy Eood, or Crucifix, which was said to 
have vouchsafed him a supernatural warn- 
ing before he went out to meet William the 
Conqueror, even became the war cry, and 
^'Holy Crosse" rang from the lips of the 
English as the Normans swept over the 
downs between Pevensey and Hastings at 
the battle of Senlac. 

To those familiar with Bulwer-Lytton's 
tale of ^'Harold," there is nothing quite so 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

charming in the romantic history of Eng- 
land as Edith's devotion to the King, and, 
after his unfortunate marriage, her with- 
drawal to the convent that adjoined the 
monastery at Waltham. She saw him, as 
she thought, for the last time when he 
was coronated at Westminster. Hiding 
herself in the throng as King Harold 
walked from the church to the palace, ^^she 
bent forward, with her veil half drawn 
aside, and gazed on that face and form of 
more than royal majesty, fondly, proudly. 
The King swept on and saw her not ; love 
lived no more for him.'' 

But now the Normans were preparing 
to invade the country. After the martial 
preparation of the last day, Harold re- 
solved to pass the night at Waltham Ab- 
bey. Edith was kneeling before the altar 
when he arrived, but she crept away un- 
seen. And as the King cast himself be- 
fore the crucifix, the image of the suffering 

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Christ is said to have bowed its head. The 
monks trembled at the ill omen, while 
Edith, terror-stricken, sought the solitude 
of her own chamber; but ere long she was 
summoned to appear before the King. In 
this last meeting Lord Lytton has put into 
the mouth of Harold quite the noblest 
words that man could ever utter to the 
woman he had loved and lost. ^^Into 
eternity melts the past," said the King; 
^'but I could not depart to the field from 
which there is no retreat — in which, 
against odds that men say are fearful, I 
have resolved to set my crown and my life 
— ^without once more beholding thee, pure 
guardian of my happier days." 

Thus they parted ; and when Edith again 
looked upon the face of her beloved King, 
ghastly in the light of the flickering 
torches on the battlefield, she is said to 
have fallen upon his body, crying, ^^He is 
mine! He is mine!" 

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SEEING EUEOPE ON SIXTY DOLLAES 

Naturally, if you have read ^^ Harold,'' 
all of the foregoing incidents come to your 
mind as you linger on the banks of Corn- 
mill stream, with the hazy, purple hills of 
Hertfordshire stretching far beyond. You 
long to tear down the impenetrable veil 
which divides the present from the past, 
and people these sacred ruins with the 
characters you revere; to hear the royal 
hounds yelping in the glades of Epping 
forest; to behold the handsome figure of 
King Harold, the beautiful form of Edith, 
with flimsy, trailing draperies and wind- 
swept tresses; or to gaze upon the long 
procession of chanting monks issuing from 
the abbey gateway, the drawbridge swing- 
ing across the moat ; or, perhaps, count the 
human heads on spikes on Temple Bar 
(which now stands in a nearby estate), for 
this barbarous custom of exhibiting human 
heads was practiced even as late as the 
Jacobite attempts to restore the Stuarts. 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLAES 

But the woman and the king, like the war- 
rior and the monk, have together passed 
into eternity as a tale that is told, and you 
hear nothing save the whisper of the west 
wind through the ancient trees, the cawing 
of the rooks, and behold naught but the 
low descending sun and gray, crumbling 
ruins. 

A little northeast of the abbey gateway 
an ancient stone bridge spans Cornmill 
Stream. This bridge is evidently of great 
antiquity, and probably of contemporary 
date with the church, as its traditional 
name of ^^ Harold's Bridge" appears to in- 
dicate. It is considered that this was the 
only passage across the stream in ancient 
times, and that not only Harold, but Tovi 
before him, used this bridge when proceed- 
ing to the royal forest of Waltham. At a 
later period it served the monks of Wal- 
tham as the approach from the abbey pre- 
cincts to their fish ponds. The work of 

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dissolution is still going on, and unless an 
effort is speedily made to preserve it from 
utter ruin, this most interesting piece of 
antiquity will disappear altogether, like 
the monastery with which it was so long 
associated. 

The gateway is still in a fair state of 
preservation, and was originally ap- 
proached by a drawbridge. There are 
numerous fragments of the ancient walls 
of the monastery in the abbey gardens, 
and the remains of subterranean passages, 
or tunnels, which were used as water- 
courses in monastic times, have been dis- 
covered here, extending in all directions. 
Eecently a pilgrim's earthenware bottle 
was found ten feet below the surface, and 
this vessel is now preserved in the vestry 
with other relics of the past. 

The twelve massive piers or pillars 
erected by King Harold in his grand Nor- 
man church were probably intended by the 

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pious founder to represent the twelve 
apostles. The most interesting and valu- 
able relic of the abbey is the existing nave, 
which stands now with traces of its pris- 
tine glory. The old lichgate, at the en- 
trance of the churchyard, is considered to 
be the oldest existing relic of domestic 
architecture connected with the abbey. 

A few antiquities of minor importance 
are still preserved in a safe in the modern 
vestry of the abbey. Among these relics 
of the past the following are worthy of 
mention : A brass coin of the reign of the 
Emperor Vespasian, who presided over 
the destinies of the Eoman Empire, A. D. 
69-79. The bust of this sovereign and part 
of his name are still discernible. It was 
probably brought to Waltham by a soldier 
attached to the legions of Julius Agricola, 
who finally established the dominion of the 
Eomans in Britain, A. D. 78-85. 

The head of an ancient battle-ax was dis- 

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covered in the soutli aisle of the abbey 
about four inches below the surface dur- 
ing the restoration in 1859-60. It was 
originally a formidable weapon and very 
heavy, weighing over three pounds, al- 
though the rust of centuries has greatly 
reduced its weight. On its discovery it 
was at once assumed that it must be King 
Harold's battle-ax, by means of which that 
great warrior of Saxon times did such exe- 
cution among his enemies at Stanford 
Bridge and on the fatal field of Senlac, 
near Hastings. 

The story of Harold's burial at Waltham 
has been generally accepted, although some 
question its accuracy. Writers of the 
highest authority, however, have be- 
lieved that the body of the last of the 
Saxon kings was laid to rest in the temple 
which he had erected, just as his godly 
predecessor in the kingly office had found 
a tomb in his abbey church of West- 

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minster. It may be quite true that at first 
William the Conqueror, in anger and con- 
tempt, gave orders for the burial of the 
corpse of his vanquished foe under a cairn 
of stones on the seashore near the place 
where he fell. The ancient chroniclers, 
Malmsbury, Wendover, Matthew and 
Wace, all agree in the belief that Harold 
was buried at Waltham. 

King Henry VHI was very fond of hunt- 
ing, and it is said that he preferred for 
that purpose the royal forest of Waltham, 
or Epping forest, as it is now called, to 
any other in England. In the state rec- 
ords of his reign there are many allusions 
to the forest, something like this: ^^The 
Marquis of Exeter. Personal Expences, 
&c. commencing 2 June, 1525 — Paid on 23 
June against my lord went to Windsor for 
money boat hire when the King was hunt- 
ing in Waltham forest. ' ' In 1522 the King 
appears to have visited Waltham with the 

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Emperor Charles V, and an agreement was 
made there between the two sovereigns 
^^for an enterprise by land against the 
King of France/' 

The King's eldest daughter, Princess 
Mary, afterwards Queen Mary of notori- 
ous memory, frequently visited Waltham. 
During the month of December, 1522, the 
Princess and her household were in resi- 
dence at Copped Hall, in Waltham parish. 
Here is an account of some of the receipts 
and disbursements in her household: ^^6 
oxen at 22s.; 55 muttons at 2s. 4d.; 28 
porkers at 2s. 6 l-2d. ; a fat pig, 6s. ; 47 cods, 
21s. 5d.; 1 barrel of salmon, 35s.; and 30 
little pigs at 4d." All of which shows that 
the Princess Mary was inordinately fond 
of pork. 

King Edward never ceased to lament 
the loss of his amiable queen, Eleanor, who 
died in Lincoln, and gave expression to his 
affection and reverence in various ways. 

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A memorial cross was set up on the high 
road near every religions honse where the 
Qneen's body had rested on its way to 
Westminster. The memorial at Waltham 
Cross is one of the three monuments 
erected by the King which have been pre- 
served from destrnction, the others are 
still to be seen at Northampton and Ged- 
dington. Seven or eight of the crosses 
were swept away by the fierce storms of 
the great rebellion nnder Cromwell, when 
vandalism was rife on every side. The 
crosses of Lincoln, Grantham, and Stam- 
ford were destroyed by the soldiers of the 
Earl of Manchester. Charing Cross was 
pulled down by soldiers acting nnder Sir 
Eobert Harlow in 1674, and the materials 
carted away and sold. The idea of erect- 
ing crosses as memorials was undoubtedly 
suggested to the mind of King Edward by 
the crosses which he had seen erected in 
France to the memory of his kinsman, 

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King Louis IX, the saint Lonis of 
the French monarchy, who had accom- 
panied him when he and his lamented Elea- 
nor set out on their crusade to the Holy 
Land, twenty years before her death. 

When King Edward II died on the bor- 
derland of Scotland, having gone in per- 
son with his mighty host to snbdne the 
Scots, under Eobert Bruce, his dying wish 
was that he should be kept above ground 
until Scotland was reduced; consequently, 
his body was embalmed and remained for 
many days at Waltham Abbey before the 
tomb of Harold. Thus the last and the 
first of the English kings rested side by 
side. "When Harold was defeated and 
slain at the battle of Senlac, the dragon of 
Wessex gave place to the leopard of Nor- 
mandy; two hundred years later, the line 
of English kings began once more. 

Such are the ancient associations of 
Waltham Abbey, once the glory of Eng- 

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land ; now a drowsy parish, where a church, 
monthly is published, containing para- 
graphs, not about King Henry VIII and 
Cardinal Wolsey, bnt as follows: ^^On 
July 24th, about fifty of the mothers 
who attend the weekly meetings at the ab- 
bey were taken in brakes to Earl's Court 
Exhibition, where an enjoyable day was 
spent." On the cover pages are to be 
found advertisements for choice teas, de- 
licious butters, pigeon food and home-made 
sausages. 

Thus modernism, like the ghost of 
royalty and romance, stalks amid the ruins. 



163 



APPENDIX 

Cheap Steamship Rates to Europe: 
Donaldson Line from Montreal, Britisli 
third-class, $31.25; Allan Line from Bos- 
ton to Glasgow, one class, $45.00; Anchor 
Line, New York to Glasgow, $50.00; Cun- 
ard Line, Boston to Liverpool, second- 
class, $50.00; French Line, New York to 
Havre, second cabin, $55.00; Hamburg- 
American Line, from New York, $57.50 — 
from Philadelphia, one class, same rate; 
American Line, New York to Southamp- 
ton, second-class, $52.50 — from Philadel- 
phia, during Winter and Intermediate sea- 
son, $47.50; Holland- American Line, New 
York to Eotterdam, via Plymouth and 
Boulogne, second cabin , $55.00; Leyland 
Line, Boston to Liverpool, one class only, 
$50.00; North German Lloyd, via Plym- 

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SEEING EUEOPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

onth, England, second-class, $55.00^ — same 
line, Baltimore, Md., to Bremen, $57.50; 
Eed Star Line, New York to Antwerp, sec- 
ond-cabin, $55.00 — same line, Philadelphia 
to Antwerp, one class, $55.00; White Star 
Line, New York to Cherbourg and South- 
ampton, second-cabin, $55.00 — from Bos- 
ton, Liverpool service, one class, $50.00; 
Hamburg- American Line, second-class, 
New York to Genoa, Italy, $65.00; and 
Fabre Line, Mediterranean service, from 
New York, to Naples, $55.00 — to Palermo 
or Messina, $59.00— to Lisbon, $60.00, all 
second-class. 

Cheap Excursion Tickets from London: 
The railway and steamship companies in 
London offer cheap trips and excursions 
throughout the year, including half-day, 
day, week-end and continental tourist 
tickets, and there are many travel organ- 
izers who arrange independent tours, in- 
cluding travel and hotel accommodations, 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

at very reasonable rates. The list given 
below is revised up-to-date, and there is 
little variation in the rates from year 
to year, except occasional reductions. 
The one fare is for the round trip. 

From Enston Station week-end tickets 
are issued on holidays, Friday to Tuesday, 
round trip : To Belfast and the North of 
Ireland, $6.08; to Dublin and the South 
and West of Ireland, $6.81; Isle of Man, 
$5.22; Edinburgh and Glasgow, daylight 
express, $6.81; North and Central Wales, 
$5.00; Liverpool district, $4.13; Manches- 
ter district, $4.13 ; Birmingham, $2.07 ; day 
trip to Colwyn Bay and Llandudno, Wales, 
$3.04; a day in Shakespeare's country, via 
rail and motor tour to Kenilworth Abbey, 
Guy's Cliff e, Warwick Castle, and Strat- 
ford-on- Avon, $2.92. 

Waterloo Station : To North Devon and 
North Cornwall, $5.35; Dartmore, $4.62; 
Dorset coast, $2.67 ; rail and sea trip (via 

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SEEING EUROPE ON SIXTY DOLLARS 

Southampton), to Havre, France, $6.08; 
Eouen, $7.90; Guernsey, in Jersey, $5.59; 
St. Malo, $6.08; Paris, $6.32; Bournemouth 
and New Forest, $1.28. 

London Bridge Station: To Brussels, 
third-class, via Calais, $5.83; Ostend, 
$3.77; The Hague, $5.47; Amsterdam, 
$6.20; and Boulogne, $3.41. 

Victoria Station: To Southsea and 
Portsmouth, $1.03; Isle of Wight, $1.76; 
Hastings and Eastbourne, $1.03 ; Brighton, 
.73 ; Arundel and Littlehampton, .73 ; Dork- 
ing, in the Surrey Hills, .57; and Epsom, 
.36. 

Some Continental Tours: , These tours 
begin about Easter time, and include 
travel and hotel accommodations. A week 
in Paris, $21.96; Ostend, $14.11; Holland, 
$18.49; Switzerland, $22.51; North Ger- 
many, $18.98; Venice, taking in Paris, 
Lake of Lucerne, Italian Lakes, eleven 
days, second-class, $49.13. 

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